Welcome to the Data and Information Services Center (DISC), comprising the former DPLS, the data services operations formerly housed in the Center for Demography and Ecology and the Center for Demography of Health and Aging!

What's New at DISC?

Facebook by the numbers and other recent data-related articles.

See the latest edition of DISC News -- April 2010 (HTML) or April 2010 (PDF).

New weblog-based format for Current Social Science Research Reports (CSSRR)! These daily current awareness posts replace the e-mail subscription to the weekly reports in the fields of sociology, economics, and health. The content is the same, but the updates are more immediate!

The iPOLL survey-question database from the Roper Center has a new interface. Please note that while no e-mail login is required to search the database, users do need to complete a free one-time registration in order to download datasets, even if you had already registered under the old system.

The Catasto study (census and property data from 15th century Italy), long available for download from DISC's online archive, has now also been published in DISC's BADGIR catalog for online access and analysis.

Check out our Internet Crossroads, providing searchable annotated links to social science data and information across the Internet. Featured new addition:

AidData: Tracking Development Finance
Development Gateway; College of William & Mary
http://aiddata.org/

The AidData site offers a portal for data “describing the universe of development finance project-by-project, including all grants and loans committed by all major bilateral and multilateral aid donors.” The core of the AidData site is a searchable catalog with close to a million records of development finance flows, that can be specified by donor, recipient, purpose, activity, and years. Results can be viewed online or exported for analysis. Much of the data comes from OECD Creditor Reporting System (CRS), going back to 1973. Other data was collected from donor organizations, either through public documents or through direct contact. So far, AidData only covers funding that originates from governments, but plans to cover funds from private foundations and NGOs (non-governmental organizations) in the future. The site also includes research publications from AidData, a blog by AidData staff, and links to other sources of development data.

See other recent additions to the Internet Crossroads (last updated 16 June, 2010).

New: Updated information on Restricted Data at DISC.

Links to Country Statistical Yearbooks worldwide: a guide by DISC on the UW-Madison libraries website. 136 countries, and counting!

Check out what's new at other selected data sites.