UW Library Electronic Data Service | Library

MINUTES OF THE MEETING, FEBRUARY 7, 2005

Present: Christy Branston; Sandra Keys; Judy McTaggart (Recorder); Mark Polger; Shabiran Rahman (Facilitator)

Regrets: Neil Patterson, Richard Pinnell

1. Minutes of the Meeting of January 17, 2005:

Item 2, Business Arising (Paragraph 3) … last line should read “Two members of TDR will be represented on the new CAPDU executive (Sandra is Treasurer, Michelle Edwards is Vice President).

2. Business Arising:

Shabiran welcomed Mark Polger ( Librarian for Sociology and Psychology) to the EDS Group.

3. EDS Advisory Group:

The group discussed the best way to proceed with the planned EDS Advisory Group meeting. It was agreed the best time to hold the meeting would be during the last two weeks of April as classes are finished and exams are almost over. A Monday or Thursday during that period would be preferred and lunch would be provided. Action: Christy will draft a message to be sent to the faculty members. She will send the draft to the EDS members first.

4. Joint DLI/RDC Collaboration: (Shabiran)

Shabiran noted the group is planning to host a mini conference on Friday, April 29 at Guelph. The agenda still needs to be finalized. To date, the two Laurier faculty members who spoke at Data Day are scheduled to speak. Shabiran will update the group as she gets more information.

5. E-Data Link: (Christy)

Christy noted that, as part of the new website design, she would like to have the e-data page moved into e-reference. She showed Harvard’s page as an example. The group agreed the link should be on the sidebar to make it prominent and help with promotion. There was discussion about possibly adding the e-data link into the e-reference database. It was also noted there is a need to make the librarians aware that these datasets exist so they can add them to their discipline pages.

6. EDS Office: (Christy)

Christy reported she spoke with the student who has been using the EDS office frequently and clarified that the room is to be used only for something the students cannot access through the network (i.e. only available on the EDS machine). She noted we will not have a large number of undergraduates using the EDS office. Currently all the software has been removed from the machine and a decision needs to be made about what to have reinstalled. Chris Grey would then load them. Sandra noted she has the list of what was previously on the machine and she could update the list (she receives notification when new things come in). Action: Sandra will update the list and give it to Christy. She will also speak with Wolf to see what he can do to restrict access only to things on the EDS machine.

7. Nesstar Update: (Richard)

Richard referred to the Nesstar update he had previously sent by email. Points of his message included:

Nesstar is fully functional and is being populated
Communications and Consumer Surveys are complete, and Education is in progress
All of the Stats Canada data is moving first, with the Census last due to its complexity
Statistics Canada also has a Nesstar license and is populating their server as well
The goal is to have the work complete by the Spring Semester
ICPSR data will benefit from the fact that they will be working with DDI to make their data available and we will be able to share with them
Jack Cooper has been added to the team moving over documentation for Nesstar

The Steering Committee discussed implementation of the service. Should people be allowed to use it as the data becomes available or wait until it is fully populated? The Committee agreed we should let people use this service as soon as possible. Two parallel servers will have to run for a while and it still needs to be determined what the best way is to make the new server known to our users.

8. Around the Table:

Mark asked how the e-data should be promoted on the web pages. Shabiran suggested it should be put on the Sociology page as Barry McClinchey (Sociology faculty member) is very interested in e-data.

Christy noted she is still planning to have office hours in EDS. She has delayed this due to the frequent use of the room by a student using it for legitimate reasons.

Shabiran reported that Mark is now listed as a contact on the EDS page. She will have her name removed. She will also have her name removed from Data Links and replaced with Mark’s.

Mark will take a look to see where the link for e-data should go on the EDS page. He will also be meeting with Sandra for EDS training.

Next Meeting: Monday, March 7, 2005; Porter 407; 1:30 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.

Facilitator: Richard

Judy McTaggart

August 3, 2005