LIS839 SPECIAL COLLECTIONS:
DATA LIBRARIES

Instructor: Cindy Severt

The easiest way to contact me is via email, severt@dpls.dacc.wisc.edu. Make sure that you put LIS839 in the subject line of the message to insure that I see the message. I can also be reached by phone at 262-0750.

I am available for office hours from 11:30 to noon in room 4110, and by appointment in 3308 Social Science.

The class is scheduled to meet in the SLIS Computer Lab (4191F) from 8:55 to 11:25 Monday - Friday. The first half of the class (approximately 8:55-10:00) will consist of an interactive, "show & tell " lecture followed by a 15 minute break. 10:15-11:25 will be used for lab exercises, to work on your assignments, or course readings.

Week 1: What is the collection? Aka Getting One's Baby Hands Around This Basketball

• Data vs. Statistics
  1. Raw ASCII, http://dpls.dacc.wisc.edu/PowerPoint/pa878/_raw.txt
  2. Tabulated data, http://dpls.dacc.wisc.edu/PowerPoint/pa878/_table.txt
  3. Fact, http://dpls.dacc.wisc.edu/PowerPoint/pa878/_fact.txt
     
     
• History
  1. Collection Development Policies (samples), http://dpls.dacc.wisc.edu/lis839/ref04colldev.pdf
  2. Roper Center, 1946, http://www.ropercenter.uconn.edu/
  3. ICPSR, 1962, http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/
  4. DPLS, 1965, http://dpls.dacc.wisc.edu/
  5. UK Data Archive, University of Essex (BIRON), http://biron.essex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/biron
     
     
• Main Datasets
  1. Current Population Survey, http://www.bls.census.gov/cps/cpsmain.htm
  2. General Social Survey, http://www.norc.uchicago.edu/gss/homepage.htm
  3. National Health Interview Survey, http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nhis.htm
     
     
• Guest speaker 6/21: Eric Grodsky, Ph.D candidate in Sociology will speak about education data
  

Week 2: What is Done With the Collection?

• Secondary analysis, http://dpls.dacc.wisc.edu/wla/index.html#TangibleAbstracts
• Data verification
  
  
• Reference interviews, http://dpls.dacc.wisc.edu/LIS839/c10_datareference.pdf
  
  1. Units of analysis
     
  2. Records/Observations
     
  3. Variables
     
  4. Documentation & Questionnaire
     
     
• Field trip to Social Science building: DPLS & CDE, Tuesday 6/26/01
  
  
• Data extraction via an online application
  
  
• Guest speaker 6/27: Charlie Fiss, Information Manager, Center for Demography and Ecology (CDE) will speak about manipulating data with statistical packages, http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/cde/library/lis839/lecture.htm

Week 3: Managing the Collection

• Identifying, locating, acquiring, disseminating, preserving datasets
  
  1. ICPSR Archival Deposit Form
     
     
• Collection development policy
  
  
• Data on the internet, a virtual visit, http://dpls.dacc.wisc.edu/LIS839/july2.html
  
  
• Guest speaker 7/5: Jack Solock, Data Librarian, CDE will speak about data sources on the internet.

Week 4: Data Services Policy

• Data services policy, computing environment
  • http://www.carleton.ca/~ssdata/dcdummies.htm
  • http://dpls.dacc.wisc.edu/LIS839/ref01serviceplans.pdf
    
    
• Professional associations, conferences, job descriptions, marketing, references, etc.
  • http://dpls.dacc.wisc.edu/LIS839/Skills_Needed.pdf
  • http://www.lib.umich.edu/libhome/humres/vac-coordnum.htm
  • http://dpls.dacc.wisc.edu/LIS839/ref03jobs.pdf
  • http://www.apdu.org/
    • Abstract for APDU 2001 Conference
  • http://www.iassistdata.org/
    
    
• Guest speaker 7/12: David Long, Associate Researcher, Applied Population Lab
  
  
• THE FUTURE, http://dpls.dacc.wisc.edu/LIS839/future.html, evaluations
  

Grading

This class will be graded on a "contract" basis. There will be no exams. Your grade will be based on successfully fulfilling the contract for an "A", an "AB", or a "B". The individual assignments will be judged "satisfactory" (marked with a check mark), or "unsatisfactory" (marked with a minus). If you get a minus on an assignment, you will have time to correct the errors and resubmit it. All students will get at least a "B" by successfully completing the required assignments (see below). In order to get an "AB", you must successfully complete the required assignments plus one elective assignment. In order to get an "A", you must successfully complete the required assignments plus two elective assignments. If you chose an "AB", you can choose which of the two elective assignments you will do.

Due dates on assignments are final. There will be no incompletes given in the class.

Required Assignments

Weekly memos. Imagine you are an employee in a data library that is either fictional or real. In one double-spaced page write a brief memo to your Director stating a problem with your collection, your services, or another matter of your choice. Give a brief background as to probable causes of the problem, and offer a solution. Hard copy only.
DUE: June 25
July 2
July 9

Elective Assignments

An extract of five variables from the County and City Data Books via an online application from the Geospatial and Statistical Data Center, http://dpls.dacc.wisc.edu/LIS839/lis839_elective1.pdf
DUE: July 2

A five-page, double-space paper submitted either in hard copy, or diskette in MS WORD outlining "what comes next" with regard data services, computing environments, preservation, storage media, dissemination methods, access, etc.. Your ideas can be outlandish (even outrageous) as long as they are plausible………
DUE: July 12

Recommended Readings

• ICPSR Data Preparation and Archival Deposit Document http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/ACCESS/deposit.html (on reserve)
  
  
• Electronic Statistics Textbook: Statsoft. Statsoft, Inc., 1984-1999 http://www.statsoft.com/textbook/stathome.html
  
  
• Hyperstat Online
  http://davidmlane.com/hyperstat/
  
  
• Dollar, Charles M., "Electronic Archiving in the 21st Century: Principles, Strategy, and Best Practices", Of Significance…A Topical Journal of The Association of Public Data Users, Vol.2, No.2, 2000 (on reserve)
  
  
• Geraci, Diane. "For Better or For Worse: Academic Partnerships for Data Services", IASSIST Quarterly, Vol.18, No.3&4, Fall/Winter 1994.
  http://etext.library.ualberta.ca/IQ/iqVol183-4.pdf (on reserve)
  
  
• Green, Anne, Joanne Dionne and Martin Dennis. Preserving the Whole: A Two-Track Approach to Rescuing Social Science Data and Metadata, Council on Library and Information Resources, June 1999, .pdf, 53p., http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub83/contents.html
  
  
• Lievesley, Denise and Bridget Winstanley. "Access to Data for Research and Teaching". Ariadne, Issue 7, January 1977
  http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue7/essex/
  
  
• McMullen, Heather. Planning the Future of Data Services at MIT, revised January 1998.
  http://libraries.mit.edu/dewey/hm/DATA-plan.html
  
  
• Cohn, Victor. "How to Help the Public (and Yourselves) Know the Truth". Of Significance…A Topical Journal of The Association of Public Data Users, Vol.1, No.1, 1999 (on reserve)
  
  
• Wandschneider, Bo and Doug Horne. "Establishing a Data Resource Centre: Experiences at the University of Guelph", IASSIST Quarterly, Vol.22, No.2, Summer 1998
  http://etext.library.ualberta.ca/IQ/iqVol222.pdf (on reserve)
  

Appendices

• Data Library Software Tools
• Glossary of Selected Terms -- http://odwin.ucsd.edu/glossary/glossary.html
• Data Alphabet Soup
• Technobabble Web Site
  

Last updated Wednesday, July 11, 2001.