DRAFT University of Waterloo Electronic Data Service Committee Minutes for Meeting of October 12, 1994 Present:Susan Moskal(Secretary), Doug Morton(Chair), Shabiran Rahman, Bill Oldfield, Albert Kemp, Carol Vogt Absent: Debbie Tytko cc: Bruce MacNeil, Mike Ridley, Boris Bruder, Charles Woods 1. Minutes of Meeting of October 5, 1994 - Approved 2. Business Arising * Hardware Specifications (222): the equipment originally requested was estimated to cost $5,000.00, however, the quote received from the UW Computer Store was close to $6500.00. More quotes will be sought from other sources. * item 13 - CD-ROM Writer: Carol Vogt attended a meeting at which the purchase of this equipment was discussed. A proposal was drafted but serious consideration must be given to the number of potential users to justify the cost. Services are available in the Kitchener-Waterloo area to write data to cd-roms. The whole idea is still under investigation. At a meeting of the University of Waterloo Computing Committee next week Paul Dirksen will speak to this issue. Carol will report the results of this discussion at the next EDS meeting. 3. Additional Agenda 8. Budget 9. Request for new data sets 4. CANSIM/EPAS -we need to establish secure telnet links to EPAS with a mailing function on the back end. Andrea Chappell, DCS, is looking into how to send data back via mail. A secure telnet access does not appear to be a problem. 5. Census and GSS data -Bill Oldfield that today's trials with NFS mounting worked well for the CD-ROMS and it is anticipated that the data will not be a problem. The EDS Committee will be informed when a trial of our data is successfully NFS mounted. -Albert Kemp brought down more census data on the weekend which filled up a disk. -Albert has been in communication with WLU to arrange getting some missing data from them. This was done only after consultation with Laine Ruus who indicated that this arrangement was okay but caution should be taken to ensure the data has not been altered. Laine is also prepared to send us missing data on magnetic tape. Albert will notify Laine about what we need once he has rechecked our actual holdings and verified our missing files. It is anticipated that within two weeks our data set will be complete. This depends on Laine being able to send us tapes during this time - delay on providing us with missing data will extend our timeline. 6. User Interface -license/copyright statements and texts should appear in all areas where deemed necessary. Individual agreements for each set of data eg. GSS will appear in the gopher menu for that set. Since individual conditions vary from set to set this is necessary to protect both users and the University of Waterloo. -cataloguing of acquired data was discussed. It was decided to wait until we got a hardcopy of a codebook for a particular set of data and that in the process of cataloguing the codebook reference in the bibliographic record to associated data files would be included. The first opportunity to test if this is an appropriate way to proceed will happen when we acquire the hardcopy of documentation for the 1993 Violence Against Women Survey. -News/Press Release : a statement will be forthcoming from the EDS -Doug will be meeting with the Porter Reference Department on October 14th. CANSIM will be demonstrated and the service explained and any questions and concerns will be addressed. Sue and Shabiran will be in attendance to elaborate on topics when appropriate. 7. Violence Against Women Survey data set -this will appear at the top level of the gopher -Shabiran will write the about page -the text of the license agreement will be included in full -Albert is ftping the data as it and corrections become available -Susan has had an order created on MASS and David Emery has signed the agreement. This will be sent to Ottawa on October 14th. 8. Budget -after discussing the merits of requesting a separate buget for EDS data sets versus working with the existing system it was decided to try and see if M.A.S.S. records could include information that would enable EDS to track expenditures. Sue will take this concern to the Task Group on Electronic Media which is working on selection, acquisition and processing procedures for electronic information. EDS preference is to have data purchases remain the responsibility of selectors. 9. Requests for new data sets - Shabiran Rahman -What do we do if a faculty member says he/she knows a data set exists and needs to find out where it is? What do we do if a faculty member has data that they want to mount for general use? -after considerable discussion it was concluded that EDS needs to have a policy document dealing with these issues. Doug will draft a policy to consider in our next meeting. With respect to the first question about the location of data it was felt that advise could be given to the requestor as to where to search and how. Selectors may also need to be involved in seeking information. One approach would be for an EDS Committee member to post a query on CAPDU-L enquiring if anyone knows where this data resides. With respect to the second question regarding release of the data it was felt that the following should be included in the policy: EDS is under an obligation to archive data sets for faculty who have conducted research at University of Waterloo, but will do so only if there is a codebook and other documentation included so that the package is complete as well as any license agreement authorizing release of such data and a statement authorizing distribution. -The draft policy will be reviewed by the existing committee and will, at a future date, be discussed with faculty and student representatives on the committee. The inclusion of faculty and student representatives on the EDS Committee has been deferred until 1995 at a previous EDS Committee meeting. Next Meeting: Oct. 19, 1994, 1:30p.m. , LIB 428 Susan Moskal, Reference and Collections Librarian Dana Porter Library, University of Waterloo Waterloo, Ontario N2L 4G1 Phone: 519-888-4567, ext. 2890 FAX: 519-747-4606 E-Mail: srmoskal@library.uwaterloo.ca