The IASSIST Quarterly (IQ Vol. 31 issue 1 - 2007) is now available on the web: http://iassistdata.org/publications/iq/iqvol31.html Welcome to the first issue of the IASSIST Quarterly, vol. 31. We have passed the 34th IASSIST conference, also known as the Stanford IASSIST 2008 conference - best ever. However, the IASSIST Quarterly vol. 31 is known also as the 2007 volume. Yes, we are behind our schedule; but at least we are consistently so.
I took a long look at UNData the other day and came away thinking “pretty; looks functional; how does it relate to other UN products, esp. the ones we’re paying for”. I sent those questions to the feedback address and Mr. Zoltan Nagy responded with the following helpful information. Thought I’d share in case others had the same questions… I took a long look at UNData the other day and came away thinking “pretty; looks functional; how does it relate to other UN products, esp.
Technology of Data: Collection, Communication, Access and Preservation The 34th International Association for Social Science Information Services and Technology (IASSIST) annual conference will be held at the Stanford University, Palo Alto, California, USA, May 27-30, 2008. This year’s conference, Technology of Data: Collection, Communication, Access and Preservation, examines the role of technology and tools in various aspects of the data life cycle. The theme of this conference addresses how technology can affect aspects of data stewardship throughout the data lifecycle.
For those not familiar with the Web 2.0 numeric data utility Swivel - their mission “is to liberate the world’s data and make it useful so new insights can be discovered and shared”. However, it looks like Swivel are going official! Some NGOs are directly uploading their data into Swivel while in other cases Swivel are gathering data directly from ‘official’ Web sites such as OECD, ILO, UNESCO, WHO - see http://www.
The UKDA celebrated its anniversary in style, with a reception at the Houses of Parliament in London on Wednesday, 10th July (2007), a forward-looking workshop in its new building at the University of Essex on the 11th, with a return of some familiar faces who have moved on to retirement or other fields. See press release at http://www.jisc.ac.uk/news/stories/2007/07/news_ukda.aspx The occasion called for reflection on the past, as the news story illuminates:
The RIN (Research Information Network) has recently published a draft consultation paper - Stewardship of digital research data: a framework of principles and guidelines (April 2007) and are seeking feedback from practitioners. The draft discusses the shared framework of principles and guidelines required for key stakeholders (researchers, research institutions, funding bodies, libraries, data managers, learned societies and publishers) in order to maximise the potential benefits of digital research data and to help ensure that ‘ideas and knowledge derived from publicly-funded research should be made available and accessible for public use, interrogation, and scrutiny, as widely, rapidly and effectively as practicable.
Luis Martinez, IASSIST member and Data Librarian at the London School of Economics, has begun an entry on Wikipedia on the topic “Data Library”. Luis welcomes this community’s help in fleshing it out and providing more context. For those who have never been involved with Wikipedia, the editors come round and add comments, and often seem to judge the importance of an entry based on the number of people involved with ‘curating’ it.
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.
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).
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.
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