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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. Overview. Introduction to the working group Work to date
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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.
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.
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.
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.
Work to date • Review of existing material • Annotated bibliographies • Code of Best Practice • Document for data producers RSS. March 2000. HB/The Data Archive.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A practical application of the DDI Nesstar & Faster: XML for data preservation, resource discovery and data dissemination RSS. March 2000. HB/The Data Archive.