Cessda Experts meet (and eat well) CESSDA Council of European Social Science Data Archives...

Cessda Experts meet (and eat well)CESSDA Council of European Social Science Data ArchivesCESSDA is an informal combination of the West European data archives with the aim of a free andintensive exchange of data. CESSDA was established in 1976 by the then existing European dataarchives. The President is at present Kevin Schurer from UKDA and the secretariat is held by Hans Jørgen Marker from the Danish Data Archive.

Participants from 14 archives, 36 peopleAlfredsson, Iris (SSD) [[email protected]]Alvheim, Atle (NSD) [[email protected]]Aparicio Galparsolo, Carmen (ARCES) [[email protected]]Bischof, Christian (WISDOM) [[email protected]]Breitenstein-Leuba, Christine (SIDOS) [[email protected]]Campo Gan, Isabel do (ARCES) [[email protected]]Campo Ladero, Mª Jesús (ARCES) [[email protected]]Clausen, Nanna Floor (DDA) [[email protected]]Esclapez Pizana, Ricardo (ARCES) [[email protected]]Fredzu, Christina (GSDB) [[email protected]]Garrido González, Beatriz (ARCES) [[email protected]]Hadorn, Reto (SIDOS) [[email protected]]Hidalgo Rodríguez, Miguel Ángel [[email protected]]Jääskeläinen, Taina (FSD) [[email protected]]Kastrun, Tomaz (WISDOM) [[email protected]]Keckman-Koivuniemi, Hannele (FSD) [[email protected]]Kleemola, Mari (FSD) [[email protected]]Krone, Michael (DDA) [[email protected]]Laseca Arellano, Jesús (ARCES) [[email protected]]Linardis, Apostolos (GSDB) [[email protected]]López Cabanas, Raquel (CIS) [[email protected]]Marosi, Veronika (SSD) [[email protected]]Mauer, Reiner (ZA) [[email protected]]Miller, Kenneth P (UKDA) [[email protected]]Moschner, Meinhard (ZA) [[email protected]]Mykkeltvedt, Alette (NSD) [[email protected]]Rey del Castillo, Pilar (ARCES) [[email protected]]Richardson, Matthew (ICPSR) [[email protected]]Rodríguez Chico, Nieves (ARCES) [[email protected]]Sáez de Castro, Valentina (ARCES) [[email protected]]Vipavc Brvar, Irena (ADP) [[email protected]]Volchkina, Natalia (SSDA) [[email protected]]Watteler, Oliver (ZA) [[email protected]]Weatherall, Jo (UKDA) [[email protected]]Wittenberg, Marion (DANS) [[email protected]]

http://www.nsd.uib.no/Cessda/

mailto:[email protected]









Small group vs wider community

“Human endeavor is caught in an eternal tension between the effectiveness of small groups acting independently and the need to mesh with the wider community.

A small group can innovate rapidly and efficiently, but this produces a subculture whose concepts are not understood by others. Coordinating actions across a large group, however, is painfully slow and takes an enormous amount of communication.

The world works across the spectrum between these extremes, with a tendency to start small—from the personal idea—and move toward a wider understanding over time.”

Tim Berners-Lee, James Hendler and Ora Lassila The Semantic Web,

Scientific American, May 2001

Madiera Cessda

History, as it is known to man ….

TransistorsUNIVAC

1Integrated

circuits

Inter-net

TCP/IP

Micropro-cessors IBM PC

AppleMacIntosh

HTMLWWW

Mosaic

Infrastructure for

the social sciences

Mainframe

PC

Internet/WWW

Java

XML

1945 1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000

Mini

CESSDACOUNCIL OF EUROPEAN SOCIAL SCIENCE DATA ARCHIVES

1960 - ZA1962 - ICPSR1967 - UKDA1972 - NSD

Tools for thought

“Much more time went into finding or obtaining information than into digesting it. ”

Dr. J.C.R. Licklider

time spent on digesting and thinking

time spent on finding and accessing )(Maximize

1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009

History Future

Within the Cessda framework, we have been running a focused joint

project for more than 10 years

CESSDA Meeting 1994

CESSDA IDC

NESSTAR project FASTER Nesstar ltd

Limber

DDI

Cessda DDI GroupMadiera IDC2 = cCat

Cessda MMG Group

Metadater

ELSST Thesaurus

eSSENCE

HASSET Thesaurus

A formulationtion of the long term ambitionbecame the ”Point of Departure” for ”the Social Science Dream Machine”

• all existing empirical data available online• one integrated resource discovery gateway in order to

identify and locate relevant resources• extensive amounts of metadata available integrated with the

data• data should be available in any format• ...and in any language• the ability to carry out simple browsing, visualisation and

analysis of the data on-line• comparable data should easily be identified• hyperlinks from the metadata to every relevant report or

publication• an efficient feedback system to the body of metadata

allowing the user to add to the collective memory of a data source

(Jostein Ryssevik/Simon Musgrave)

From IDC to IDC IIIntegrated Data Catalogue

IDC

SomeMeta-data

Meta-data Data

Knowledge

IDC II = cCat

What is actually data ?

Data is a representation of an object or a process in the “real world”.

“The real World” Representation of “the real world”.

Data Information Knowledge

Metadata

Analysis

What comes out as specified MADIERA Objectives ?

• The development of an integrated and effective distributed social science portal to facilitate access to a range of data archives and disparate resources. WP3

• The development of specific add-ons to existing virtual data library technologies, in particular data location technology WP4

• The employment of a multi-lingual thesaurus to break the language barriers to the discovery of key resources. WP5

• An extensive programme to add content, both at the data/information and knowledge levels. WP6

• Extensive training of data providers and users to encourage the continuos growth of the infrastructure WP7

• The gradual integration of the emerging national infrastructures of the new candidate countries to the EU into the European Research Area

A C O M M O N G A T E W A Y

D A T A A R C H I V E S

D A T A U S E R S

Global Access - Local Support

Madiera portal: A second layer on top of allready existing data infrastructures

Data Providers

Publish data

Publish metadata

Add documents

•

End User

Locate data

Multilingual access

On-line data analysis

Downloading data

Browsing metadata

Browsing documents

Uploading “knowledge”

Adding comments to metadata

Adding links to publications

The Madiera Infrastructure

Data, +

Metadata standards

Multilingual thesaurus

Access control

User added information

Publications

Madiera: Some keywords

• Timely and convenient Technology– Ease of location

– Ease of access

Standards

Instruments

Searching in textDrill-down via topical classificationsGeo-referencing, geographical searchLook up comparable data

Online analysisDownloading possibilities

DDI Implementations

Nesstar Publisher, orXML editors

• Content requires

• “Politics”Access rules, legal requirements,Documentation of activityFrom Madiera to IDC2, inclusion of data

Do we tend to forget or take for granted the most important things ?

• Quality data is the key to quality research • Standardization is the key to common solutions• Success is measured through use

Implementations of the DDI on “The European Scene”

An example: A list of mandatory, recommended or optional elements

DDI Codebook Outline - Fields Comment Recommedation

2.0 stdyDscr+ (ATT == access) The Study Description consists of information about the data collection, study, or compilation that the DDI-compliant documentation file describes.

2.1 citation+ (ATT == MARCURI) Citation for the data collection described by the marked-up documentation. If dataproducer is not the documentation producer, then the "source" attribute should be used to distinguish.

2.1.1 titlStmt (ATT == )

2.1.1.1 titl (ATT == ) Mandatory in the original language

2.1.1.2 subTitl* (ATT == )

2.1.1.3 altTitl* (ATT == )

2.1.1.4 parTitl* (ATT == ) Mandatory at least in English (UK)

2.1.1.5 IDNo* (ATT == agency) (M) Mandatory

2.1.2 rspStmt? (ATT == )

2.1.2.1 AuthEnty*

(ATT == affiliation) (R) The person, corporate body, or agency responsible for the data collection's substantive and intellectual content. Repeat the element for each author, and use the affiliation attribute if available

Mandatory (recommended in English)

2.1.2.2 othId* (ATT == type, role, affiliation)

2.1.3 prodStmt? (ATT == )

2.1.3.1 producer*

(ATT == abbr, affilation, role) The producer of the data collection is the person or organization with the financial or administrative responsibility for the physical processes whereby the data collection was brought into existence. Use the role attribute to distinguish different stages of involvement in the production process.

Recommended

2.1.3.2 copyright?

(ATT == ) Copyright statement for the data collection. Recommended

2.1.3.3 prodDate*

(ATT == date)

Another example: A Common Topical Classification of

Studies across ArchivesECONOMICS - Economic Conditions and Indicators

- Consumption/Consumer Behaviour- Economic Policy (including budget and fiscal policy, public expenditure and public revenue)- Income, Property and Investment/Saving- Rural economics- Economic Systems and Development

LABOUR AND EMPLOYMENT - employment- unemployment- retirement- (in-job) training - labour relations/conflict- working conditions

POLITICS - Mass political behaviour, attitudes/opinion - elections- political ideology- domestic political issues- government, political systems and organisations- international politics and organisations- conflict, security and peace

Multilingual Thesaurus

• Produced a Thesaurus for Social Science use

• Produced Guidelines for Thesaurus construction

and translation

• Translations to several European languages

• Set up an administrative framework for

additions of concepts and local extensions and

future maintenance of the thesaurus

Content Provision

• Guidelines for content provision

• Training packs and user guides

• Workshops

• A common template for documentation work

Instruments: The NESSTAR Publisheror similar products

Technology: A somewhat expanded NESSTAR

Data location technology expanded, in addition toordinary searching in free text

• Searching in text in certain specific DDI elements• Drill down via TopcClas or ELSST• Geo-referencing, geographic search• Look up comparable data

The present Madiera Portal

1892 datasets

The Madiera Portal, drill-down

The Madiera Portal, ELSST based

Expanded search acoss many languages

AGREEMENTS: ABKOMMEN SOPIMUKSET AVTALERAFTALE ΣΥΜΦΩΝΙΕΣ ACUERDOS ACCORDS AVTAL

Expanding data availability

We might find things we are not able to interpret or understandWith keywords it is easierto interpret or translate

Standarized keywords are better that home-made solutions

Geography

Looking up comparable data

The DDI-related work on how to document comparative data has shown that this is a complicated problem

Some studies are comparaTIVE by design, which means that the DDI-problem is to describe complex structures

But much data open possibilities for comparison or analysisacross 3.dimensions without being designed for that purpose

Still it means that it is at the conceptual level we can establishthe comparability, plain question wording is not enough

We have to insert concepts at variable level, and we need a sophisticated but standardized vocabulary for doing it: that is – a thesaurus or ontology

How to pick concepts from ELSST and

insert in your data documentation

More concepts – comparable data

A scheme

A Finnish researcher

A Swissresearcher

An Irishresearcher

Attitudes towards immigrants (A problem area)

Data on Finland (A geographic area)

Eurobarometer (A data collection)

AIM: Ideal end product

•A registration procedure, register with home archive

•Look up and access data across holdings

A ”Data-archive Political Context” for 20+ national archives

I. It might be money involved Is the data a free or commercial good ? There are categories of users,

what about non-academic use, non-CESSDA use ? Who are to fix the prices ?

II. Varying Access rules. The crossing of national borders What laws apply. Who set the rules Who is responsible ? What sanctions available ?

III. There are some “Common good” data Eurobarometers, Value studies, ISSP, ESS, Comparative collections Could best be provided from one single point (?) Charging ? Access Conditions ? Double Storage ?

IV. It is a good thing to have national archives, enhances amount of data available and betters the accessibility. Need justification and visibility

An integrated common data catalogue

• Archives formalise access policy• Develop a user registration system • Probably wise that archives try to standardise information

collected in the user registration process• Information on registered users and available data stored in

a (local) user database• An end user agreement with some legal status• Archives accept authentication through other archives• Nesstar write an extended log

• Every archive function as access point to the common catalogue, enhances visibility• Make it possible to take out accurate statistics on use

A Web of Social Science

• Building on a distributed model where data and resources are stored and maintained locally

• For the end user the system will appear as a integrated system

• A virtual data library offering global access to locally supported data holdings

End users

Data providers

Cessda Experts meet (and eat well) CESSDA Council of European Social Science Data Archives...

Documents

Transcript of Cessda Experts meet (and eat well) CESSDA Council of European Social Science Data Archives...