Historical Documents

This The University Record article from October 8, 1996 describes how ICPSR “completed the largest data migration ever to occur in the social sciences.”

This piece on storage and migration strategies tells the story of the move away from magnetic tape.

The New York Times obituary of Warren Miller (pdf), Feb. 3, 1999.

Report of the ICPSR Review Committee (pdf), June 1989 (the Blalock Report).

This 1981 article in the Review of Public Data Use journal (pdf) by Janet Vavra gives a snapshot of the consortium’s activities in the early 1980s.

Article by Philip E. Converse, one of ICPSR’s founders, in the Public Opinion Quarterly journal from 1964 titled “A Network of Data Archives for the Behavioral Sciences” (pdf) describing the creation of ICPSR.

A summary of Summer Program activities (pdf) from 1963-1964 annual report.

ICPSR’s first annual report (pdf). (View all annual reports)

Tributes to Erik Austin and Hank Heitowit (pdf) from the 2006-2007 annual report on the occasion of their retirement.

Remembrances of Warren Miller (pdf) after his death.

A commissioned paper by Jerome Clubb, Erik Austin, Carolyn Geda, and Michael Traugott (pdf), contained in the 1985 book Sharing Research Data, lays out the case for data sharing in the social sciences (55 pages).

This 1971 letter to officials at Union College (pdf) is an example of the efforts to attract new members to the consortium.

A 1963 article (pdf) in the journal American Behavioral Scientist by Warren Miller reporting the activities of ICPSR in its first year.

A grant application to the Ford Foundation (pdf) from March 1963 that helped launch ICPSR.

An August 1962 letter from ICPSR founder Warren Miller to Rensis Likert (pdf), director of the Institute for Social Research, describing the establishment of the Consortium.

Article by Carolyn Geda, Director, Management and Administration, and Erik Austin, Director, Archival Development, from the edited book, Archivists and Machine-Readable Records (pdf)