Abstract
We will examine the issues of releasing and sharing the data collected by qualitative research, in the case of the construction of a database of the research reports on village communities stored in the Sociology Research Laboratory of Kyoto University. The Sociology Research Laboratory has a library of 449 volumes of village community research reports dating from 1947 to 1971. A database was compiled of these, as they were considered valuable as fundamental materials for local community research and as resources for social research history. However, it presented many problems that required to be examined, such as to how to make the database or how finally to release the data. As to releasing the data, there were issues of copyright and image rights, as well as what kind of restrictions should be imposed on the usage of the data and the database system. By reviewing how these issues were coped with, we will examine how materials stored in university research laboratories should be released.
