Information access at the data file level: documentation prerequisites on the file-level data base inquiry process

In the mid-sixties, political and social science was theory-rich and data-poor. [1] In the decade following this statement, the ever-increasing holdings of machine-readable datasets in a growing chain of data repositories throughout the world have made the social science community much more wealthy. But, the vast scientific potential buried in data repositories is being transformed only at a slow pace. In the mid-seventies, quantitative data generated by empirical political and social science research are still heavily underexploited.