[Air-l] AoIR communal data-database

[Nancy Baym]

>Friends,
>
>     In point 4 of Nancy's proposal for a data repository there is this
>statement: "Our intention is that access to such private resources
>contributed by aoir members
>would be limited to aoir members."  I see no reasonable justification
>for restricting access and would not participate in the venture if
>such restrictions are adopted.

My assumption was that people would prefer to limit the access to 
their data, otherwise it would fall under that first category of data 
already available on the web. Personally, if I were going to make 
data I'd collected available, I'd like to know that there was a 
limited set of people who would have access to that, and that I could 
get that list on the member website. However, the level of access is 
certainly open for discussion and I'd be inclined to defer to the 
will of the people who were willing to share their data through a 
resource like this. If they want it available to all, then that's 
fine.

The issue of how much of what aoir does under its auspices should be 
available to all and how much should be available only to members is 
a tricky one and there are arguments on both sides. It's a matter of 
ongoing discussion with every idea we come up with. Speaking only for 
myself, my train of logic goes like this --> do we distinguish 
between members and nonmembers? if we don't what does membership 
mean? if membership doesn't mean anything then why join? if no one 
joins there's no budget, eventually no conferences, eventually no 
association. While I believe that aoir should not be an exclusive 
little clique, I do think it's important to provide benefits for 
members that are better than the benefits of not being a member. It's 
not like membership is hard to come by.

Regarding metadata, I concur with Jeremy. If we're talking about data 
that are incomprehensible without being in on the research program or 
that needs a lot of sophisticated metastuff that's more than a 
codebook and explanation could provide, then it's probably not 
appropriate for this. On the other hand, there is a lot of data 
available already on the web that's being used just like this (e.g. 
Pew's data).

Regarding whether this is too big to be sustained by volunteers, 
maybe a volunteer effort can't sustain this. If this is not something 
people would find adequately valuable to participate in, then it 
won't work. On the other hand, all of AoIR thus far would seem to be 
a lot more than a volunteer effort could sustain, and it seems to be 
working pretty well because people have cared enough to volunteer 
their energies.

Nancy

_________________________________________________________
Nancy Baym
nbaym at ku.edu
http://www.ku.edu/home/nbaym
Communication Studies, University of Kansas
102 Bailey, 1440 Jayhawk Blvd., Lawrence, KS 66045, USA
VP, Association of Internet Researchers: http://aoir.org