Wendy Watkins The Data Centre Carleton University Ottawa, Ontario
May 1997
Canada has had a very busy year. The 1996 Census results have
begun to trickle out and will continue to gain momentum over the
coming months. In addition, three major longitudinal surveys,
covering labour and income, children, and health were launched by
Statistics Canada. And with a federal election less than a month
away, we'll be deluged by polling data from a variety of sources.
As well as Statistics Canada's Census output and new surveys, the
agency has recently embarked on an ambitious metadata project. This
project aims to provide finding aids for searching Statistics Canada's
web site as well as documentation for evaluating and using data
files. The first year of the project will be aimed at providing 'proof
of concept'. In the longer run, it will complement the IASSIST/ICPSR
Data Documentation Initiative.
But the biggest news is that Data Liberation has taken off beyond
our wildest expectations.
At the outset of the project, we thought that we would likely have
about twenty institutions in the first year, perhaps thirty by the
second and optimistically forecast forty by the third. Here, at
the beginning of year two, we have fifty-five institutions who are
already participating and another few who are likely to join. These
new Canadian 'dataphiles' should provide a good source of potential
IASSIST members.
Because data represent a new 'frontier' for the vast majority of these
institutions, two issues have risen to almost emergency proportions.
The first is training. Each of the new data service points is located
in the university's library, and the onus for providing access is
often added as another duty to other full-time responsibilities. It
quickly became evident that something must be done, and soon.
To that end, four regional workshops will be held across the
country. One person from each institution will be subsidized to
attend, although an institution may send as many as it wishes. To
date there are 122 registrants. Members of IASSIST are heavily-
involved as instructors.
Topics to be covered include content, ordering and verifying files,
using Statistics Canada software and establishing a level of
service. The two-and-one-half day workshop will include classroom
instruction, round-table discussions and hands-on sessions. All
the training will be completed by mid-June.
A second priority is the designing of a user-friendly front end.
CREPUQ, the Quebec university libraries' umbrella group,
decided on a cooperative project to design a web-based, user-
interface patterned on the University of Calgary's successful
Landru system (for which Calgary was the fortunatel recipient of a
substantial grant). Other institutions have ventured out on separate
endeavours, and we hope that, in the near future, Statistics Canada
will be able to organize these efforts in a central system.
And I cannot submit a report without mentioning the hard work of
not only the participants, but of the dedicated staff from
Statistics Canada who have laboured on our behalf. We owe them a
debt of gratitude for their efforts.
Although Data Liberation was a major 1996-97 story, it wasn't the only big
news. CAPDU '96 attracted a very good turnout and provided the
groundwork for the training that is now about to take place. Plans
for CAPDU '97 are nearly finalized. It will include workshops on Canadian
longitudinal files and the 1996 Census. Canada's newest contribution
to the IASSIST Administrative Committee will also be presenting a
session and Anastassia Khouri will give a synopsis of the CREPUQ
initiative.
The ACCOLEDS meeting in Victoria last August resulted in an expansion
of data activities for this group. They've moved beyond their initial
mandate of an ICPSR federation to encompass the coordination of wider
data interests. The OCUL/CREPUQ federation's mandate, on the other
hand, seems to remain foremost as an ICPSR federation, although
workshops and training include the wider group.
The Metropolis project, and international research program
investigating immigration and integration issues, saw its Canadian
contribution initiated with the creation of four centres of excellence
located in Vancouver, Edmonton, Toronto and Montreal. Fifteen
universities are partners in these four centres. Researchers at these
institutions will be producing new data titles as well as analyzing
existing data. A national data committee is being formed for this
project and members of the data library community will play some role
here.
As I said, it's been a busy year in Canadian data circles. And we hope
that will mean we will see several new Canadian IASSIST members at the
meeting in 1999.