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The CESSDA Portal: Break on through (to the Other Side)

Explore the history and renewal process of the CESSDA website, challenges faced, and a demonstration of the new CESSDA portal. Visit http://www.cessda.org/ for more information.

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The CESSDA Portal: Break on through (to the Other Side)

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  1. Door of Perception- The CESSDA Portal “Break on through (to the Other Side)” Mari Kleemola Information Services Manager Finnish Social Science Data Archive mari.kleemola@uta.fi IASSIST 2007 Thursday, May 17, 2007, Montreal Session E2: The CESSDA Experience: a Royal Mountain Road to Success

  2. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that single archives in possession of good data collections, must be in want of a common catalogue.

  3. C'mon Everybody • Overview of the history of the CESSDA website • Description of the renewal process • Challenges faced on the way/things learned • Demonstration of the new CESSDA portal • http://www.cessda.org/

  4. Imagine – sharing all the world • Spring 1994: the first CESSDA website • The map with links to the archives

  5. Yesterday- history until 2005 • Integrated Data Catalogue IDC in November 1994, after the Grenoble Expert Seminar • Hardly any changes since 1996 • Number of visits declined from 25000 in 2000 to less than 10000 in 2004 • Use of the IDC diminished from 2400 visits in 2000 to only 200 visits in 2004

  6. To be or not to be - 2005 • April 2005: General Assembly, Neuchâtel: decision to form a Planning Group, led by FSD, to prepare suggestions for modifications • August 2005: CESSDA Website Planning Group formed • October 2005: Expert Seminar, Madrid: website session • November 2005: Planning Group decided on the most urgent minor modifications • November 2005: 1t stage of renewal completed (critical updates only) • December 2005: Planning Group made a detailed proposal to CESSDA GA to renew the site (a.k.a. 2nd stage of renewal)

  7. That is the question - 2006 • May 2006: General Assembly meeting, Luxembourg: decision to put the renewal process forward, to form an Editorial Board, and to finalise the new common catalogue • September 2006: First prototype of the new site • September 2006: CESSDA Executive meeting, Copenhagen: several decisions to speed up the EB’s work. UKDA to develop the new catalogue.

  8. You Can't Always Get What You Want The work depended on political decisions, e.g. • Replacing IDC with new common catalogue • Which archives/organisations to be included in the map • CESSDA Intranet • Establish an Editorial Board • Resources and timetable • Physical location of the server • Define user groups

  9. Let's Stay Together Source: CESSDA-PPP bid / Building blocks

  10. Breaking through - What a feeling • New site 16.3.2007

  11. With A Little Help From My Friends • Decentralized distribution of work and responsibilities: • NSD retains the www server • NSD created the layout • UKDA responsible for the data portal server • FSD responsible for updating the www content • ZA has registered the cessda.org domain • Each archive responsible for its own data catalogue

  12. Message in a Bottle • Complex user interface design via email is difficult (or even impossible) • Need to distinguish between functionality (what buttons to click) and design (what we wish to communicate) • More or less voluntary work gets us only so far • Still some unfinished issues (eg. intra, links to other resources,…) due to lack of time etc. • Resources needed: CESSDA is not a legal entity and has no regular centralised budget • Clear political level decisions needed at an early stage • Only clear questions will result in clear answers!

  13. Neverending Story - Challenges • Different cultures (what is seen as public information) • At the moment the portal is mainly in English – what needs to be translated? • An easy-to-use communication channel to facilitate collaboration and to share best practises (Intra) needed • Current data portal might be a bit confusing to the end user • Different archives have different policies about which studies and what information (metadata/data) they publish – and in which language • Long-time policies missing • Many more addressed in the CESSDA PPP bid

  14. Data Portal • A seamless interface to datasets from social science data archives across Europe • Can be viewed in nine languages • The data may be located in several ways: • search - free text search • browse by topic - CESSDA classification • browse by keyword - thesaurus assisted browsing • browse by data publisher • Most of the datasets freely available for academic use. • Individual data archives have different access conditions -> need to consult the relevant data archive for more information

  15. Free text search • Performed on all areas of the metadata by entering a search term or phrase in the search box • Where the search terms match a concept in ELSST the search will be performed in all languages supported in ELSST • A list of all resources containing the search term(s) and their language equivalents will be displayed • Where the search term has matched a concept in ELSST, related terms will be offered as suggestions to refine or broaden the search • Also offered: the option to narrow the search to one language • The search term can be truncated by using *

  16. Browsing • By topic • CESSDA two-tier topic classification • Specific terms will be offered as suggestions to refine the search • Also offered: the option to narrow the search to one language • By keyword • ELSST terms are displayed in multi-level hierarchies • Only those ELSST terms that will lead to resources being discovered are listed (either directly or through a narrower term) • By selecting a term a free text search will be performed across all areas of the metadata using that term and all its synonyms in all supported languages • Clicking on the "Assigned Keyword Search" displays a list of resources which have had the selected term in any of the supported languages assigned as a controlled vocabulary keyword

  17. The End Thank you!

  18. Planning group members As of November 2005 • ADP (Slovenian Social Science Data Archive): Irena Vipavc Brvar • ADPSS (Italian Data Archive for Social Sciences): Carlo Pisano • DANS (Data Archiving & Networked Services, Netherlands): Marion Wittenberg • DDA (Danish Data Archives): Lone Bredahl • FSD (Finnish Social Science Data Archive): FSD web team (contact person Hannele Keckman-Koivuniemi) • GSDB (Greek Social Data Bank, National Center for Social Research): Christina Frentzou • ISSDA (Irish Social Science Data Archive): James McBride • NSD (Norwegian Social Science Data Services): Bjarne Øymyr • RODA (Romanian Social Data Archive): Adrian Dusa • SDA (Czech Sociological Data Archive): Yana Leontiyeva • SIDOS (Swiss Information and Data Archive Service for the Social Sciences): Christine Breitenstein-Leuba & Fredy Kuhn • SSD (Swedish Social Science Data Service): Birger Jerlehag • UKDA (UK Data Archive): Lenin Ageer & Ken Miller • WISDOM (Wiener Institut für Sozialwissenschaftliche Dokumentation und Methodik): Tomaz Kastrun • ZA (Central Archive for Empirical Social Research, University Cologne): Reiner Mauer

  19. Editorial board members • Mari Kleemola, FSD • Bjarne Øymyr, NSD • Hans Jørgen Marker, DDA • Pam Miller, UKDA • Irena Vipavc Brvar, ADP

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