A DATA BANK: The SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC ARCHIVE CENTRE

New forms of source material demand new centres of preservation and retrieval. Today government officials, academics and the staff of commercial organizations share an interest in the data collected by social and market research survey interviewers. Information may exist in questionnaires, in decks of punched cards, and on computer tapes that has never been fully analysed (for example data from television audience research). Other data may have been analysed, but not published. Little of this material is readily available to those who need it, and the work put into it is largely wasted. In the future, research workers wishing to construct mathematical models using past experience will curse us, if this material has not been preserved for their use.