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Standards for Documenting Data for Preservation and Sharing: The RSS Working Group on Data Preservation and Sharing

This article provides an overview of the work done by the RSS Working Group on Data Preservation and Sharing, including the establishment of standards for documenting data for preservation and secondary analysis. It discusses the benefits and disadvantages of the Data Documentation Initiative (DDI) and potential developments in the DDI. The article also highlights the practical application of the DDI in a tool called Nesstar and Faster, which allows for data preservation, resource discovery, and data dissemination.

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Standards for Documenting Data for Preservation and Sharing: The RSS Working Group on Data Preservation and Sharing

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  1. The RSS Working Group on Data preservation and sharing: standards for documenting data for preservation and secondary analysis. Hilary Beedham The Data Archive, University of Essex Chair, RSS working group. RSS. March 2000. HB/The Data Archive.

  2. Overview • Introduction to the working group • Work to date • The Data Documentation Initiative • Benefits & disadvantages of the DDI/DTD • Potential developments in the DDI RSS. March 2000. HB/The Data Archive.

  3. Why establish a working group? • Lost statistical source material • Preserve the context • An historical record • Recognition of need for action RSS. March 2000. HB/The Data Archive.

  4. Terms of Reference • To promote the preservation and sharing of electronic data both within the Society, and to the wider data producing community. • To promote awareness of the need to preserve administrative data and supporting material from the past. • To establish a code of best practice and provide appropriate advisory material to aid those wishing to preserve data. • To identify barriers to the preservation and sharing of data and to make recommendations to the Society on how these might be addressed. RSS. March 2000. HB/The Data Archive.

  5. Work to date • Review of existing material • Annotated bibliographies • Code of Best Practice • Document for data producers RSS. March 2000. HB/The Data Archive.

  6. Initial Review • The group reviewed a broad and significant amount of existing material, e.g. - EC DLM Guidelines - NTTS - ICPSR - guidelines for data deposit - ICPSR - DDI/DTD - Qualidata material (qualitative material) RSS. March 2000. HB/The Data Archive.

  7. Review conclusions... • Interest in preservation is high • There is a body of existing work • This tends to have an organisational focus • There is common ground but no agreed common standards • Capitalise on existing expertise • Apply standards at data creation • Potentially expensive for data producers RSS. March 2000. HB/The Data Archive.

  8. Annotated bibliographies • Sources of information relating to the preservation and sharing of administrative and survey statistics • Sources of information on preservation and sharing statistics in other disciplines RSS. March 2000. HB/The Data Archive.

  9. The DDI Initiative • The Data Documentation Initiative • A Project to Develop an XML Document Type Definition for Data Documentation • Maps to 15 elements of the Dublin Core • 30 other recommended elements for social science research & data management • http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/DDI/codebook.html RSS. March 2000. HB/The Data Archive.

  10. The DTD structure • Description or codebook header • The study description • The data files description • The variable description • Other study related material • Appendix for generic lower-level elements RSS. March 2000. HB/The Data Archive.

  11. Benefits & disadvantages • Benefits - machine & software independence - data & metadata stored together - standards make dissemination easy • Disadvantages • - snowballing demands on DDI team • - limitation on complex data structures • - limited management of routing RSS. March 2000. HB/The Data Archive.

  12. Developments for the DDI - 1 • version 1 with tag library published March 2000 • public availability of DDI for research institutes and software houses • version 2 might include: - aggregate data • - complex files (hierarchical, time-series) • - relational & object-oriented databases RSS. March 2000. HB/The Data Archive.

  13. Developments for the DDI - 2 - documenting complex CATI/CAPI survey instruments - possible creation of style sheets for web browsing or - a combination of xml & Adobe Acrobat™ presentation - interactive metadata entry software - interoperability with o-o databases & other standards initiatives RSS. March 2000. HB/The Data Archive.

  14. A practical application of the DDI Nesstar & Faster: XML for data preservation, resource discovery and data dissemination RSS. March 2000. HB/The Data Archive.

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