University of Waterloo
                    Electronic Data Service Task Group
                      Minutes of Meeting June 1, 1994


Present:  Albert Kemp
          Doug Morton (Secretary)
          Bill Oldfield (Chair)
          Richard Pinnell
          Shabiran Rahman
          Debbie Tytko
          Carol Vogt
Guest:    Erin Harvey
CC:       Bruce MacNeil
          Boris Bruder
          Mike Ridley

1.   Erin Harvey - Statistic Consulting Service
     The committee welcomed Erin Harvey of the Statistics
     Consulting Service.  Bill Oldfield outlined our mandate,
     progress to date and aspirations for the future; Erin
     outlined the services offered by the Statistics Consulting
     Service and discussion ensued about how the two services
     could interact.

     The Statistics Consulting Service exists to help students,
     faculty, and staff with the statistical analysis aspects of
     research projects.  Typically, a user has some data and
     wants to know something about it.  SCS do not do the
     research nor the actual analysis. Both they and DCS
     consulting can provide some assistance with using SAS and
     SPSS but the type of assistance will vary depending on the
     level of the client.

     Erin agreed that the proposed procedure for access to the
     Census data looked promising (get "stub" or "definition"
     files from gopher, edit to extract the desired data, and use
     in SAS or SPSS).  She agreed with our previous visitors that
     print codebooks are useful.

     Erin can be contacted by e-mail at epharvey@jeeves or voice-
     mail at ext 6505.

2.   Minutes of Previous Meeting
     Apr 18    Item 5, para 2  masterfile(s) should be system
     file(s)  (2 occurrences)
               item 5, para 3, line 1, drop the word "about".
     Apr 25    Accepted

3.   Business Arising
     To be covered below.

4.   Additional Agenda
     None

5.   CANSIM/EPAS
     Doug Morton reported that he had been in contact with Chris
     Leowski of EPAS and that the software had been set up on
     "Library".  Chris now needed some contacts for further
     negotiations, these will be provided.

6.   Census and GSS data
     Albert Kemp has been able to set up FTP routines to copy
     Census files from the U of T distribution point to
     "EISLIB2".  He also had a list from Laine Ruus of all files
     that have been distributed.

7.   Access to existing DRC data
     There is still quite a bit of data from the DRC on tape in
     the Computer Centre.  Those that existed as SPSS or SAS
     system files were converted from CMS to Unix compatible,
     before the CMS equipment was decommissioned, and stored on
     ATTIC.  Many of the remaining files are readable only from
     CMS machines and the following access procedure is
     suggested:
     The user will likely know exactly which tapes and files are
     needed.  Contact Steve Breen, Mgr Operations Group, with
     information on which files, from which tapes, and where the
     data is to go, and Steve will look after it.

8.   User Interface
     Doug Morton gave a brief demonstration of the UW-EDS gopher
     pages and menus set up in the playground.  Committee members
     are invited to examine them and comment.

9.   Next Meeting
     Wed. June 8, 1994, 1:30 p.m.,  LIB 428