The WWW version of the Data and Program Library Service (DPLS) Catalog of Holdings provides users with access to descriptions of the data sets currently available for use at the library. These catalog descriptions are not duplicated in MADCAT, the UW-Madison library catalog. (However, published reports and other bibliographic material related to major datasets may be available in campus libraries and found in the UW-Madison Electronic Library.) DPLS is the primary campus-wide clearinghouse for storage and access to machine-readable data files in the Social Sciences. For further information about the library itself, see About DPLS.

If you do not find what you are looking for in the DPLS WWW catalog, you may want to extend your search to the holdings of the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR). DPLS holds the UW-Madison membership to the consortium, and datasets are available for downloading from any UW-Madison networked computer.

The catalog is designed to accomodate subject browsing, or keyword searching. Datafiles themselves are not downloadable from the catalog, but detailed descriptions, and in some cases online codebooks may be viewed.

Nearly all of the data available at the DPLS are raw ASCII files. That is to say, they are not embedded in a statistical package such as Dbase or SAS. In most cases, users must choose which statistical package they wish to use with the data and then write the program necessary to access them. Many of these files are quite large and need to be manipulated into a smaller size before transfer to a microcomputer. An increasing number of our data sets come on CD-ROM discs and some of these have their own easy-to-use software packages for data extraction. If a data set is on CD-ROM it will be noted as such in the title field.

The library staff is happy to answer any questions or help you with any problems concerning identifying and accessing data for analysis.

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