By San | May 3, 2006
A new issue of the IASSIST Quarterly (IQ Vol. 29 issue 2)is now available on the web:
We are pleased to present this second issue of the IASSIST Quarterly vol. 29. The issue contains three articles from the IASSIST conference in Edinburgh in May 2005. This is a second posting of this information as the original posting got lost in cyberspace.
At the session called “Using National Data” the paper on “Economic data as snapshots in time” was presented by Katrina Stierholz from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. The paper informs about several systems storing economic statistics and the systems have important historical dimensions: “Looking back at decisions made, it is important to be aware of what the data at the time said, not what they say now”.
Another session called “Discovering a Profession: the Accidental Data Librarian” a presentation “Looking for data directions? - ask a data librarian” was given by Stuart Macdonald (Edinburgh University Data Library) and Luis Martinez (London School of Economics Data Library). The article presents “The Local Data Support Landscape in the UK” and focuses on specialized national data centers starting a tax assessment from 7th century, mentioning the Domesday Book from 1086, and then moves quickly to the establishment of the start of UK Data Archive in 1967, and the others to follow like ESDS, EDINA, MIMAS, AHDS and several more.
“Enriching Metadata: the Lifecycle Perspective” was a session that contained the presentation “Providing context for understanding: the data life cycle” given by Elizabeth Hamilton from the University of New Brunswick, Canada. The presentation is turned into the paper “Providing Context for Understanding: Insight from Research on Two Canadian Health Surveys”. The conclusion is that there is a need for placing the survey data in context including metadata from the earliest part of the data life-cycle to give “a complete record of evolution of that question, from concept to analysis.”
– Contributed by Karsten Boye Rasmussen