Introduction to theUniversity Data Libraryand national data services

Stuart Macdonald

Graduate School of Social & Political Science Induction15 & 16 September, 2011

EDINA and Data Library within Information Services

Divisions User Services Library and Collections IT Infrastructure Applications EDINA and Data Library Digital Curation Centre

What is a data library?

A data library refers to both the content and the services that foster use of collections of numeric and/or geospatial data sets for secondary use in research. A data library is normally part of a larger institution (academic, corporate, scientific, medical, governmental, etc.) established to serve the data users of that organisation.

The data library tends to house local data collections and provides access to them through various means (CD-/DVD-ROMs or central server for download). A data library may also maintain subscriptions to licensed data resources for its users to access.

Data Library: History

Established out of the Program Library Unit in early 1980s to provide access to data on mainframes, e.g. 1981 population census data. Was part of EUCS, now Information Services

Part of long tradition of sharing machine-readable data for secondary analysis in the social sciences

Became a national data centre as EDINA in 1993 - data library continues University remit

celebrated 25th anniversary in 2008

Data Library - http://www.ed.ac.uk/is/data-library

Data Library Services Finding…“I need to analyse some data for a project, but all I can find are published papers with

tables and graphs, not the original data source.”

Accessing …“I’ve found the data I need, but I’m not sure how to gain access to it.”

Using …“I’ve got the data I need, but I’m not sure how to analyse it in my chosen software.”

Managing …“I have collected my own data and I’d like to document and preserve it and make it

available to others.”

Reference Interviews

Data Library Resources Large-scale social science survey data Country and regional level time series data Population and Agricultural Census data Data for mapping Resources for teaching

Opening hours: 9.30am – 5.30pm (Tues & Thurs)

5 Buccleuch Place, 2nd floor

Tel.: 0131 651 1431 or 0131 651 1744

Email: datalib@ed.ac.uk

Research Data Management Services

Guidance via suite of web pages Research data management training:

JISC-Funded Research Data MANTRA project - http://www.ed.ac.uk/is/data-library-projects/mantra

Open Educational Resources aimed at PhD students and early career researchers

Online RDM tutorials, data handling exercises, video interviews Content licensed using CC-attribution to allow re-use and re-purposing

Institutional data repository provision Assistance with deposit in national archives

Edinburgh DataShare - http://datashare.is.ed.ac.uk/

Applied Quantitative Methods Network (AQMeN) - http://aqmen.ac.uk/

The Applied Quantitative Methods Network (AQMeN) is led by a team of academics from eight Universities in Scotland. It is a three year project funded jointly by the ESRC and the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) as part of the ESRC Quantitative Methods Initiative.

The main objective is to build capacity in the use of quantitative methods amongst the social science community in Scotland and beyond.

Data Library host and manage the AQMeN website

AQMeN provide access to: data analysis tools; software; teaching resources; data resources, research skills, communication and dissemination resources

Plus links to training & events and an online discussion forum

Introduction to National Data Services

UK Data Archive

Founded in 1967 and based at the University of Essex

ESRC / JISC-funded

Houses several thousand social science and humanities datasets

Provides resource discovery and support for secondary use of quantitative and qualitative data in learning, teaching and research.

More recently it has worked with environmental and medical data sources.

Services provided include:• Economic and Social Data Service• History Data Service • UK Census portal • Rural Economy and Land Use Programme Data Support Service• Secure Data Service• Survey Question Bank• UKDA StatServe

UKDA - http://www.data-archive.ac.uk/

The ESDS is a distributed service, based on a collaboration between four key centres of expertise:

• UK Data Archive (UKDA), University of Essex • Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER) , University of Essex • Manchester Information and Associated Services (MIMAS), University of Manchester • Cathie Marsh Centre for Census and Survey Research (CCSR), University of Manchester

It provides an integrated service offering enhanced support for the secondary use of qualitative and quantitative data across the research, learning and teaching communities

Economic and Social Data Service

ESDS - http://www.esds.ac.uk/

ESDS features include:

Data – full/partial catalogue search, browse by subject, also links to major studies, new releases

Support – finding data, online guides, learning and teaching resources, online data analysis tools (NESSTAR), external statistical sources, FAQ

Resources – Online data browsing tools, DDI tools, qualitative tools

Advice for creating and depositing research data - best practice for ESRC researchers and beyond, preservation guidelines

News & Events – workshops, new data, publications (incl. good practice guides)

The Samples of Anonymised Records (SARs) are a sample of individual person-level records drawn from the 1991 and 2001 Census databases that have been anonymised. Each file contains a broad range of socio-demographic characteristics for respondents.

Interaction data involve flows of individuals in the UK between origins and destinations. These flows are either the residential migrations of individuals from one place of usual residence to another or of commuters making journeys from home to workplace via CIDER

Longitudinal studies are data sources that contain observations of the same research units over a period of time – e.g. ONS Longitudinal Study of England and Wales, Scottish Longitudinal Study – linking census data to vital statistics via CELSIUS

Casweb - http://casweb.mimas.ac.uk

• Mission statement: “..to enhance the productivity of research, learning and teaching in UK higher and further education..”

• Networked access to a range of online resources for UK FE and HE

• Services free at the point of use for use by staff and students in learning, teaching and research through institutional subscription

• Focus is on service but also undertake R&D (projects services)

delivers about 20 online services has about 10 major projects (including services in development) employs about 80 staff (Edinburgh & St Helens)

EDINA National Data Centre – http://edina.ac.uk

UKBORDERS – http://edina.ac.uk/ukborders/

EDINA Digimap - http://digimap.edina.ac.uk/

Other non-academic UK data sources

National Records of Scotland (NRS) – http://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/

Scottish Census Records On-line – http://www.scrol.gov.uk/scrol/common/home.jsp

Office for National Statistics (ONS) – http://www.statistics.gov.uk/hub/

ONS Neighbourhood Statistics – http://www.neighbourhood.statistics.gov.uk/

Scottish Neighbourhood Statistics (SNS) –

http://www.sns.gov.uk/

NISRA - http://www.nisra.gov.uk/ Welsh Government Statistics - http://wales.gov.uk/topics/statistics/?lang=en

Pics from Flickr (creative commons attribution) – credits

include: D Sharon Pruitt

Thank You

stuart.macdonald@ed.ac.uk

r.rice@ed.ac.uk

datalib@ed.ac.uk