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Editor: Joanne Juhnke, Special Librarian September 2006
Californial Department of Finance, Financial and Economic Data IASSIST 2006: Data in a World of Networked Knowledge Ann Arbor, Michigan set the scene for this past summer’s lively gathering of the data professionals who make up IASSIST, the International Association of Social Science Information Service and Technology. The conference theme, “Data in a World of Networked Knowledge,” not only set the conference agenda but also highlighted an excellent reason to participate: the unparalleled network of worldwide expertise in social science data among the attendees, representing 21 countries. Data librarians Lu Chou and Joanne Juhnke took part in the conference on behalf of DPLS. Several issues stood out during the four days of workshops and sessions, May 23-26. For those who dig deep into innovations in metadata, the Data Documentation Initiative (DDI) version 3.0 made an impressive preview throughout the conference. This new version of DDI expands DDI 2.1 by taking a comprehensive look of the life cycle of social science data. Modules are used to capture the cycle from research conception, data collection, data production, data archiving, data distribution, data discovery, and data analysis all the way to repurposing. Two workshops gave conference participants a chance to learn the concept and structure of DDI 3.0. Specific topics such as data comparability over time, geographic information coverage, instrument documentation and application development were featured in two additional presentation sessions, “DDI for the Next Decades: Toward Version 3.0 (Parts 1 and 2).” Another two intertwined and recurring issues involved institutional repositories and open data access. Institutional repositories, such as the University of Wisconsin’s MINDS@UW (http://minds.wisconsin.edu/), are beginning to play an increased role in social science data preservation and access. The open data access theme, related to the broader movement of open access in scholarly publishing, seeks to include data in the conversation on publishing models alternative to increasingly-expensive and restrictive commercial publishing. Institutional repositories are one option; the National Institutes of Health and the OECD are among other organizations promoting public access to the results (including data) of publicly-funded research. Both attendees from DPLS contributed presentations to IASSIST 2006. Lu Chou’s paper was called “From Primitive Numbers to Knowledge: How Technology Has Enhanced the Dissemination of Social Science Data.” The presentation discussed the service shift in recent years as the library responds to changes in data dissemination technology and tighter restriction imposed by the data distributors. Joanne Juhnke addressed sources and strategies for keeping abreast of professional developments in social science data between annual conferences in her presentation “Keeping Current in Social Science Data (Without Paddling Upstream).” A companion web page of links to related resources is online at http://dpls.dacc.wisc.edu/pubs/keepingcurrent.html. Next year’s IASSIST conference will be hosted by McGill University in Montreal, Canada from May 16 to 18. “Building Global Knowledge Communities with Open Data” is the theme for IASSIST 2007. DPLS Invited to Data-PASS Meeting In the spring of 2006 DPLS was invited to attend a meeting of the Data Preservation Alliance for the Social Sciences (Data-PASS) Partnership meeting in Ann Arbor. Data-PASS partners currently consist of ICPSR, The Roper Center, the Howard Odum Institute, the Henry A. Murray Research Archive, NARA, Harvard-MIT Data Center, and the Library of Congress. The goal of this broad-based partnership is to ensure the long-term preservation of datasets not yet collected. Funded by an award from the Library of Congress through its National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP), Data-PASS seeks to acquire and preserve data at-risk of being lost to the research community, from opinion polls, voting records, large-scale surveys, and other social science studies. Because it is a partnership, Data-PASS can more effectively survey and identify important research being done in the social sciences than can a single organization. The institutions that make up the partnership have long histories and secure long-term funding from their home institutions or other sources. They are well positioned to retain and preserve the content developed by the project – content that could very well include datasets produced at UW. William H. Sewell Social Sciences Building Sharp-eyed observers may have already noticed the new sign in front of 1180 Observatory Drive, or new designations in places like signature files or the DPLS News masthead. On September 15, 2006, the social science building was renamed in honor of the late William H. Sewell (1909 – 2001), sociology scholar and former chancellor of UW-Madison. Among his many contributions to social science as a discipline, Sewell is perhaps best remembered for the ongoing Wisconsin Longitudinal Study of the high school class of 1957, which he founded and guided for many years. The celebration on September 15 included a carillon concert, a dedication ceremony, a symposium on the future of social science research and its impact on public policy, and a reception and dinner. ICPSR Undergraduate Research Paper Competition Using ICPSR data in an undergraduate paper is more than just a great way to explore a social science topic and learn quantitative analysis. Now it’s an opportunity to win a cash prize! ICPSR has announced its first annual undergraduate research paper competition. Undergraduates from ICPSR member institutions such as UW-Madison are eligible to participate; first prize is $1000, second is $750, and third is $500. Submission deadline is January 31, 2007. See http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/prize/ for full details on competition guidelines. DPLS staff will be glad to help you get acquainted with the ICPSR archive. Please let us know if you have questions.
IPUMS-International Expands and Improves In June 2006 the IPUMS-International project added 19 new samples from Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, South Africa, and Venezuela for a total of 47 samples from 13 countries, with 143 million person records. The project plans to add approximately 100 more samples in the next four years. Also introduced with the new samples were some technical innovations designed to make the site at http://www.ipums.org/international/ more user-friendly as the amount of data and metadata grows:
Modeled on IPUMS-USA, IPUMS-International is an effort to inventory, preserve, harmonize, and disseminate census microdata from around the world since 1960. Variables have been given consistent codes and have been documented to enable cross-national and cross-temporal comparisons. Crossroads Corner Crossroads Corner highlights web sites recently added to the searchable Internet Crossroads in Social Science Data on the DPLS web site. The Pew Global Attitudes Project offers a compelling collection of worldwide public-opinion surveys for a post-9/11 world at http://pewglobal.org/. The inaugural survey for the project, under the auspices of the Pew Research Center, was conducted among opinion leaders in 25 countries worldwide in November and December of 2001, with a focus on the then-recent events of September 11. The project’s original intent, as announced in the initial survey report, was to “measure the impact of globalization, modernization, rapid technological and cultural change and recent terrorist events” on values and attitudes worldwide. To date, more than 90,000 interviews in 50 countries have been conducted, and the focus has expanded to include other aspects of people’s views on their own lives and the state of the world, though issues related to the 2001 attacks and subsequent events continue to play a prominent role in the surveys. Datasets from ten of the surveys are available for download after a free registration. The download includes a data file in SPSS .sav format, plus a questionnaire file and codebook file. The site also carries survey reports, commentaries, and links to media stories that reference Pew Global Attitudes Project surveys. The Madiera portal at http://www.madiera.net/ provides a common web-interface for selected holdings at 11 social-science data archives across Europe, for a total of over 3000 studies as of September 2006. Madiera is based on Nesstar software, which allows users to search data holdings and examine the data in various ways. Type a search in the text box (don’t forget to check the “translate” option) to search for keywords at the variable level, or choose to search or browse by archive or at the topic level. The expandable hierarchy tree at the left allows examination of study-level and variable-level metadata, including frequency counts. The Nesstar software also allows users to create tables and perform some types of analysis, as well as downloading data. However, each data archive has its own standards for granting access to their data, and users must apply to the host archive for permission. For the acronym-conscious: MADIERA stands for Multilingual Access to Data Infrastructures of the European Research Area. Historical Statistics of the United States, Millennial Edition Online The historical counterpart to the annual Statistical Abstract of the United States has finally been updated and put online, and UW-Madison has a campuswide subscription at http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.web/hsus.The previous edition covered colonial times through 1970 and was issued by the U.S. Bureau of the Census in honor of the U.S. Bicentennial (DPLS has the bicentennial edition on CD-ROM). The millennial edition, greatly revised and expanded, was undertaken by Cambridge University Press, resulting in a web edition as well as 5 volumes in print, which are available at several libraries on the UW-Madison campus. Major subject categories include: Population, Work and Welfare, Economic Structure and Performance, Economic Sectors, Governance and International Relations. The online version offers tables for download in XLS and CSV, along with a custom table feature for combining multiple tables. The custom tables and some other site features require an additional free registration. |
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