2. RSS. March 2000. HB/The Data Archive. The RSS Working Group on Data preservation and sharing: standards for documenting data for preservation and secondary analysis. Hilary Beedham The Data Archive, University of Essex Chair, RSS working group.

3. RSS. March 2000. HB/The Data Archive. Overview nIntroduction to the working group nWork to date nThe Data Documentation Initiative nBenefits & disadvantages of the DDI/DTD nPotential developments in the DDI

4. RSS. March 2000. HB/The Data Archive. Why establish a working group? nLost statistical source material nPreserve the context nAn historical record nRecognition of need for action

5. RSS. March 2000. HB/The Data Archive. Terms of Reference nTo promote the preservation and sharing of electronic data both within the Society, and to the wider data producing community. nTo promote awareness of the need to preserve administrative data and supporting material from the past. nTo establish a code of best practice and provide appropriate advisory material to aid those wishing to preserve data. nTo identify barriers to the preservation and sharing of data and to make recommendations to the Society on how these might be addressed.

6. RSS. March 2000. HB/The Data Archive. Work to date n Review of existing material n Annotated bibliographies nCode of Best Practice nDocument for data producers

7. RSS. March 2000. HB/The Data Archive. Initial Review nThe group reviewed a broad and significant amount of existing material, e.g. - EC DLM Guidelines - NTTS - ICPSR - guidelines for data deposit - ICPSR - DDI/DTD - Qualidata material (qualitative material)

8. RSS. March 2000. HB/The Data Archive. Review conclusions... nInterest in preservation is high nThere is a body of existing work nThis tends to have an organisational focus nThere is common ground but no agreed common standards nCapitalise on existing expertise nApply standards at data creation nPotentially expensive for data producers

9. RSS. March 2000. HB/The Data Archive. n Sources of information relating to the preservation and sharing of administrative and survey statistics nSources of information on preservation and sharing statistics in other disciplines Annotated bibliographies

10. RSS. March 2000. HB/The Data Archive. The DDI Initiative nThe Data Documentation Initiative nA Project to Develop an XML Document Type Definition for Data Documentation nMaps to 15 elements of the Dublin Core n30 other recommended elements for social science research & data management nhttp://www.icpsr.umich.edu/DDI/codebook.html

11. RSS. March 2000. HB/The Data Archive. The DTD structure n Description or codebook header n The study description n The data files description n The variable description n Other study related material n Appendix for generic lower-level elements

12. RSS. March 2000. HB/The Data Archive. Benefits & disadvantages nBenefits - machine & software independence - data & metadata stored together - standards make dissemination easy nDisadvantages - snowballing demands on DDI team - limitation on complex data structures - limited management of routing

13. RSS. March 2000. HB/The Data Archive. Developments for the DDI - 1 nversion 1 with tag library published March 2000 npublic availability of DDI for research institutes and software houses nversion 2 might include: - aggregate data - complex files (hierarchical, time-series) - relational & object-oriented databases

14. RSS. March 2000. HB/The Data Archive. Developments for the DDI - 2 - documenting complex CATI/CAPI survey instruments - possible creation of style sheets for web browsing or - a combination of xml & Adobe Acrobat presentation - interactive metadata entry software - interoperability with o-o databases & other standards initiatives

15. RSS. March 2000. HB/The Data Archive. A practical application of the DDI Nesstar & Faster: XML for data preservation, resource discovery and data dissemination