Paper short abstract:

This paper addresses the debate about open data and data management in the ethnologies, and approaches how data preservation and data sharing are mostly used by cultural anthropologists, and how their effects and consequences on ethnographic research are assessed.

Paper long abstract:

The transition from analog to digital not only required new virtual methods but also has had considerable effects on how cultural anthropologists conduct their work. Digital technologies are increasingly applied to all stages of a research lifecycle and furthermore of importance even when material is recorded and analyzed, lectures are given, and results are published: Due to growing digital research infrastructures, large quantities of digital storage space, and not least requirements provided by research funding programs long-term preservation of ethnographic research data and data sharing are up for discussion. Based on an investigation among German-speaking cultural anthropologists our talk points out the experiences researchers have made with data management, data publication and data sharing, and how opportunities, challenges and (ethical) problems of structured long-term archiving are assessed. Moreover it outlines what future appropriate handling of digital ethnographic research data could have, and what "openness" could mean in the ethnologies.