June 19, 2006
Recently I posted a message to the IASSIST mailing list about a study in in the ICPSR Publication Related Archive that had a data file in an old (SST) statistical software format. I had no tools to convert or even read that file and was looking for a solution to get the data. I solved that problem through the kindness of the software producer who converted the file for me.
June 13, 2006
The Washington Post reports that the personal information recently stolen from the VA “was stored in a format that could make it difficult for thieves to use, according to an internal VA memo.” In the May 5 memo, VA privacy officer Mark Whitney wrote that the critical data “may not be easily accessible” because most of it – including names, birth dates and Social Security numbers – was stored in a specialized, standard format used for data manipulation and statistical analysis.
June 12, 2006
Tiffani Conner, Paula Lackie and Jen Darragh are working on the handouts for an ALA poster session and have found that defining “data” and “data librarian” clearly, in a concise manner, for a non-data audience is really hard. In addition, some of the sources they consulted (the Online Dictionary of Library and Information Science - ODLIS , Oxford English Dictionary ) were not adequate (ODLIS has data, data set, social science data set but the definitions are not that great).
June 8, 2006
Melanie Wright and her doo-wop partners, Jen Green and Joanne Juhnke, treated us to this year’s song at the wrap up session. These fine phrases should be set to the tune of “My Girl” There was sunshine after weeks of rain When the IASSISTers to Ann Arbor came Why have we come so far? What can drag us from the bar? Data (data) talkin’ ’bout data (data) GIS, SDA and Atlas-TI
June 1, 2006
The Digital Life Cycle was mentioned many times during the IASSIST 2006 conference. Reaction toward this concept was varied. Some were unsure they liked this idea claiming that the life cycle was a confusing or imperfect metaphor. Others applied a very exact meaning to the concept associating it to the stages through which information passes within a system or large process. The Session that I chaired on Institutional Repositories and Social Science Data: Supporting the Data Life Cycle (B1) provided different visual representations of the digital life cycle.
May 25, 2006
Welcome to the 2006 IASSIST Conference in Ann Arbor! For those who can’t join in the fun, we (the Pubs committee and the Admin Committee) have decided it’s a good idea for us to blog the conference! (See San’s fine example below.) Use this post to comment with your thoughts on a session that really got you thinking. And, (IASSIST members only): become an editor if you would like to post more frequently - contact San.
May 25, 2006
I will start with a disclaimer that I am not a metadata expert nor do I play one on TV but I have been spending a lot of time recently contemplating metadata issues. Granted they have been issues that deal with metadata in a time series world but it gave me an interesting frame of reference for attending several sessions on metadata-related issues. Here’s my thoughts: After attending three and a half session exploring metadata issues, the one clear idea that has emerged is that there don’t seem to be any clear ideas.
May 17, 2006
Edmonton Journal technology columnist Steve Makris wrote about recent developments in data mining that could have potential implications for providing access to confidential social survey data (see “Hot Data,” Edmonton Journal, Business, G1, May 17, 2006.) Makris mentioned some major companies raiding each other’s data mining experts, such as Google hiring Kai-Fu Lee away from Microsoft only to see Microsoft swoop up Rakesh Agrawal from IBM. Can these companies capitalize on the massive data accumulated by private companies and governments through data mining technology?
May 16, 2006
On May 11, 2006, the following announcement was made about an upcoming forum at the American Library Association annual meeting that will address issues related to Open Data. During the past several years, Open Data has become a field of urgent interest to researchers, scholars, and librarians. With the amount of scientific data doubling every year, issues surrounding the access, use, and curation of data sets are increasing in importance. The data-rich, researcher-driven environment that is evolving poses new challenges and provides new opportunities in the sharing, review, and publication of research results.
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.
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