Archive MEDARD was found in 2000 as an institution for digitalising and archiving of the qualitative data. The impulse for creation of the archive was the idea of building up the infrastructure institution, which could serve to qualitatively oriented social scientists and support the secondary analysis of qualitative data. Nevertheless the goals of the qualitative data archive are not limited to cataloguing and processing of the data. MEDARD is also aiming to become a medium for professional and methodological debate about qualitative research, its ethics and problems connected to qualitative data archiving. The integral part of the archive’s agenda is a technical and software support providing assistance to researchers, who use modern technologies for digitalising and processing qualitative data. The foundation of qualitative archive was financed by the Grant Agency of the CR, which supported the project of building up the basic infrastructure and the technical background for the archive. Nowadays, after the integration of MEDARD into the administrational structure of the Sociological Data Archive at the Institute of Sociology of the Academy of Sciences of the CR, qualitative data archive steps into the new era of its existence. The background and the infrastructure of the recognized and creditable institution and solid experience in sociological data archiving contribute to improvement and expansion of the data services. During the last decade of 2005 the institutional integration of the archive and innovation of all services will be finished. Since the beginning of 2006 the archive will be fully functional for all the data users.
