Qualitative Data Archiving in the Czech Republic

The aim of the paper is to present the qualitative data archive Medard. The archive has been based upon other similar institutions in the world, particularly upon the British Qualidata archive, and it was founded in order to provide archiving of qualitative data generated by research in the social sciences and humanities. The archive acquires, deposits and provides data exclusively in digital form. It is the only qualitative data archive not only in the Czech Republic, but in the whole region. However, many obstacles impede the use of qualitative data archiving in practice among researchers. The obstacles as well as forthcoming challenges will be discussed in the presentation.