University of Waterloo
                    Electronic Data Service Task Group
                      Minutes of Meeting Mar, 16 1994

Present:  Sue Moskal
          Doug Morton (Sec.)
          Bill Oldfield (Chair.)
          Richard Pinnell
          Shabiran Rahman
          Carol Vogt

CC:       Bruce MacNeil Mike Ridley 

1.   Minutes of Previous Meeting
     none

2.   Business Arising
     none

3.   Additional Agenda
     4.   Census and GSS data
     5.   CMC
     6.   Terms of Reference
     7.   ICPSR workshop
     8.   Acquisition of data
     9.   Leisure Studies
     database
     10.  Web demo
4.   Census and GSS data
     Sue Moskal reported on her discussions with Laine Ruus. 
     There appears to be some question about what data sets of
     the Census and GSS we have actually retrieved.  Laine makes
     the data available for a window of 2-3 weeks during which
     time the subscribing institutions are expected to FTP the
     data to their own sites.  Those who miss the window may have
     to wait a considerable time until the data can be remounted. 
     Carol Vogt will look into what is here and where it is
     stored.

     The 1991 Census data will take some 10-15 gigabytes of
     storage when it is all here.  The data comes as raw data, in
     SAS system files, or as SPSS system files.  Users would use
     a catalogue of the data to determine which data they want
     and use a statistical package to retrieve what they needed. 
     There appears to be no software to make access easier
     though, if we get the data as SPSS or SAS system files
     retrieval will be easier than if we purchased it as raw
     data.

     GSS takes some 5-10 megabytes for each series (we're up to
     series 7 or 8 now).  The data come the same way as the
     Census and access methods are similar.


5.   CMC
     The Collections management Committee is setting up a sub-
     group to examine acquisition of materials in electronic
     form.  They are planning on  having representatives from
     Davis and Porter Reference Departments, Cataloguing,
     Systems, and the EDS Committee.

6.   Terms of Reference
     Bill met with the P&PG to discuss the EDS.  They had a
     couple of questions concerning the Terms of Reference and
     how far the Service will be involved with data analysis.

     The questions with respect to the terms of reference were
     discussed and resolved by changing the version distributed
     Feb 23, item 2.2 to read:
     "To develop an effective user interface allowing users to
     access and/or to retrieve the data and the associated
     documentation they require through the resources available
     at the EDS."
     Sect. 1 Objective  will be called the "Mission Statement".
     Sect. 2 Terms of Reference will be called "Goals".

     Involvement of the EDS with data analysis will be minimal.
     Users will be referred to DCS, the Statistical Consulting
     Service, and any people who are the most qualified to answer
     whatever questions arise.  EDS will an entry point into the
     system.

7.   ICPSR workshop
     Bill Oldfield circulated an announcement of an ICPSR course
     on Managing Numeric Data to be held in Ann Arbor Mich. Aug
     8-12.  While the cost is substantial for non-ICPSR members
     the committee recommended that 1-2 people attend.  The
     course description outlined skills seen as essential to the
     EDS.

8.   Acquisition of data
     Discussions were started about problems and procedures for
     acquisition of data sets.  Procedures will need to be in
     place to ensure that we get the data, that it is the
     requested data, that it is archived properly.  Much data
     will require an active acquisition process (someone
     deliberately retrieving the data).  A mechanism must be in
     place to notify acquisitions so that a proper audit trail
     can be maintained. For data stored in ATTIC someone has to
     be identified as the "owner".  It wasn't clear if the
     procedures could become clerical or not.  At the moment, it
     appears that many of the procedures may vary from data set
     to data set.

     Concern was expressed about overlap with the activities of
     the CMC subgroup.  This will be monitored as they, no doubt,
     share the same concern.

9.   Leisure Studies database
     Richard Pinnell presented advertising for a database of
     interest to Recreation.  The Group discussed who should be
     responsible for it if it were to be purchased from Library
     funds.  It was felt that the data should not be turned over
     to another on campus for administration.

10.  Web demo
     Bill Oldfield gave a demonstration of how Mosaic, or the
     web, might be used as a front end for campus access to some
     of the EDS data sets.  Concern was expressed about how many
     people on campus have machines capable of running Mosaic; 
     "less powerful" machines could run Lynx, which provides
     similar access, maintaining hypertext links.

11.  Next meeting
Wed. mar 23, 1994 at 1:30 pm. LIB 428