ANN ARBOR—Significant changes have been taking place at the world’s largest computerized social science data archive, the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR).

Part of the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research (ISR), ICPSR recently welcomed a new director, Myron Gutmann, who was formerly director of the Population Research Center and professor of history at the University of Texas-Austin. Gutmann is giving top priority to an ambitious series of activities that ICPSR has launched to expand services to approximately 500 member institutions and enhance access to its massive archive.

“The big news is ICPSR Direct,” says Gutmann. “Data users at about 100 of our member institutions are now able to download data straight from our archives to their desktops, without needing official representatives to obtain the data for them, and we’re working to open up access even further. This direct access gives students, faculty and staff researchers the chance to work more efficiently, and it gives our official representatives the freedom to provide additional services, assisting data users with substantive and technical issues rather than spending time on routine data transmissions.”

In order to make the most of ICPSR Direct, all archival documents that accompany the data must be converted to digital format, Gutmann notes. “At the start of 2001, between one-fourth and one-third of our documents were available only in paper form, and we are continuing an ambitious program to scan and convert these materials, which we anticipate will be completed within one year.”

Visiting the recently redesigned ICPSR Web site at www.icpsr.umich.edu suggests the extent of the archival holdings, which include everything from the latest ABC News/Washington Post polls on the recent terrorist attacks to a dataset describing the height of runaway slaves and indentured servants in the United States from 1700 to 1850. Some of the data sets are available free of charge to non-members. In the special topical archives, for example, data on health and medical care, aging, criminal justice, education, and substance abuse and mental health are freely available to the general public. Other data are available to non-members for a charge.

ICPSR also offers a summer training program, with a record 599 scholars from 194 institutions in 25 countries attending the courses that ended this past August. Nationally and internationally recognized for the quality of its methodological instruction, the ICPSR summer training program attracts participants from a broad range of social and behavioral sciences, including sociology, psychology and political science.

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Established in 1948, the Institute for Social Research (ISR) is among the world’s oldest survey research organizations, and a world leader in the development and application of social science methodology. ISR conducts some of the most widely-cited studies in the nation, including the Survey of Consumer Attitudes, the National Election Studies, the Monitoring the Future Study, the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, the Health and Retirement Study, and the National Survey of Black Americans. ISR researchers also collaborate with social scientists in more than 60 nations on the World Values Surveys and other projects, and the Institute has established formal ties with universities in Poland, China, and South Africa. Visit the ISR Web site at www.isr.umich.edu for more information.