University of Waterloo Electronic Data Service Task Group Minutes for Meeting of October 5, 1994 Present: Albert Kemp (Secretary) Absent: Sue Moskal Doug Morton Debbie Tytko Bill Oldfield (Chair) Shabiran Rahman Carol Vogt CC: Bruce MacNeil Mike Ridley Boris Bruder Charles Woods 1. Minutes of Previous Meeting - Approved. 2. Business Arising - * Hardware Specs (222) - A computer system for the UW-EDS office has been specified. The campus computer store will contact A. Kemp with a quote. * Preparations for Rm. 222 - The UW-EDS office (222) will not likely be ready by Jan. 1st, due to a lack of manpower in Facilities. 3. Additional Agenda - LSDB added as item 12 CD-ROM Writer added as item 13 4. Committee Restructuring - P&PG has made the recommendation to add both faculty and student representation to our meetings. It was also rec- ommended that there be two co-chairs, one to handle the technical aspects of the meeting, and one to handle the public service and coll- ections aspects. Doug Morton was unanimously elected as the new UW-EDS Chairman. 5. Implementation Planning - In addition to the standard announcements, requests for invitations to both academic and non-academic departments will be made, to explain the UW-EDS. Once the service has been officially announced, we will seek both students and faculty for the committee to represent our clients. 6. DCS Introduction to UW-EDS - Bob Hicks of DCS has scheduled an intro- ductory session to UW-EDS. It will be held on Wednesday, Nov. 23rd, from 1:30 - 2:30 pm, in room MC2009. Susan Moskal and Doug Morton have agreed to handle the session. 7. CANSIM - Doug Morton reports that the contracts for the CANSIM software and database have been signed and sent back to Toronto. Initially, UW-EDS is interested in running the EPAS software on 3 different UNIX platforms: OSF1, SUN OS, and ULTRIX. However, the current licensing agreement allows for operation on the OSF1 platform only. To pursue this option, additional funding would be required and the EPAS people have to be contacted to negotiate the cost of porting the software to the SUN OS and ULTRIX platforms. X-hier packages would also have to be created to maintain and update the software. Alternatively, a secure telnet account could be set up on Library. This is obviously the preferred course of action because of its simplicity. Carol Vogt will contact Doug Payne to see what is involved in implementing a secure telnet account, including an automatic mailing routine for extracted data. 8. GSS data - Albert Kemp reports that all the GSS data sets (cycles 1-8) are now consolidated on Library. Shabiran and Albert have already begun moving the necessary codebooks, spss, & sas files into the Library gopher. Shabiran is also in the process of creating the "about" files for the gopher. Carol Vogt will confirm with Doug Payne whether or not the file system on Library has been NFS mounted. Albert will provide Carol with the path information to test the NFS mounted data. 9. Census Data - Albert Kemp reports that all the census data on campus has been consolidated onto Library. However, there are certain files that we are missing. Bob Ellsworth at WLU (also a CARL consortium member) has asked for our help in acquiring data that they are missing. Laine Ruus has given authorization for both institutions to help each other with regard to the '91 Canadian Census data only. Albert will contact Bob to arrange for an exchange. Laine has also offered to provide us with missing census data on mag- netic tape. Carol Vogt advised that we should ask for the data in plain "ascii" format, if their system is UNIX. If they're on an IBM, the data should be in "fixed block" format. Albert will contact Laine with a comprehensive list of missing data files as soon as possible. There is also a problem with ftp access to epas.utoronto.ca. The remote server automatically closes the connection after only one file has been transferred. Laine has reported the problem to their tech people, and will post a message to CAPDU-L when more is known. 10. Room 222 - Facilities is short of resources, and therefore will not likely have the UW-EDS office ready by January 1st. Doug will contact Eric Boyd regarding the public entrance to the UW-EDS office. 11. "Violence Against Women" data set - Doug Morton will check with Sue Moskal to verify that the contract will be signed and sent back to Toronto. Although the data is free, it is still privileged. Therefore, Laine Ruus cannot distribute it until she gets authorization from Statistics Canada, that the necessary contracts have been signed by all consortium members. This data will be stored on Library, and accessed in the same manner as the Census and GSS data sets. Shabiran Rahman has agreed to implement access to this data via the Library gopher. 12. Leisure Studies Data Bank - Richard Pinnell reports that he will be meeting with Roger Mannell (Recreation Dept.) later this month, for preliminary discussions regarding the LSDB. According to Roger, the data has been converted to SPSS Export format and archived on ATTIC. Roger also said that he would be willing to attend one of our meetings to explain the data bank in greater detail, and answer any questions we might have. Doug will make the necessary arrangements. 13. CD-ROM Writer - Doug Morton reports that the University is considering the purchase of a CD-ROM mastering unit. This could provide an alter- native method of storage for census data in the future. Next Meeting: Oct. 12, 1994, 1:30 pm, LIB 428