University of Waterloo

               Electronic Data Service Task Group

           Minutes of the Meeting of November 16, 1994

Present: Doug Morton (chair), Richard Pinnell (secretary), Albert Kemp, 
Susan Moskal, Bill Oldfield, Shabiran Rahman, Debbie Tytko, Carol Vogt

cc:  Bruce MacNeil, Mike Ridley, Boris Bruder, Charles Woods

1. Minutes of the Previous Meeting - November 9, 1994
     item 2.2.6,  change "pointed out that the Web to SAS program" to
 "pointed out that the SAS program"

2. Business Arising
     item 2.2.6  Bill has not yet heard from his contact at the 
University of Michigan about the WEB to SAS program.
     item 2.2.7  Albert distributed a copy of a price quotation for a 
UW-EDS computer system. Some components are from the UW Computer Store 
and others from PC Factory; total price is $6,345.  Mike Ridley has seen 
the quotation and will take it to PPG for approval.  Bill will check into 
what stage the quotation has now reached.
     item 7  Shabiran reported that the VAW section of the gopher is now 
done.  She will put the VAW information file in the About section.  She 
hasn't yet added the sentence stating that the Library is a member of 
various consortia for the acquisition of electronic data.

3. Additional Agenda
    9.  UW Gazette
    10. Statistics
    11. Cataloguing

4. CANSIM/EPAS
    Doug is meeting with Andrea Chappell this afternoon to discuss secure 
telnet access.  Bill mentioned that the CANSIM data must be backed up on 
exabyte tapes before we add any more updates.  The last update was on 
August 26.

5. Census
    Carol has sent 17 tapes to Laine Ruus; these tapes will be returned 
to Carol.  The tapes should be taken off on VM.  Albert and Carol will 
discuss how to coordinate the ftp process once the tapes have arrived.

    Albert mentioned he had received a message from someone at the 
University of Calgary who wants access to census and macro economic 
data.  Albert will advise this person to contact his local data library.

6. GSS
    Shabiran reported that she will create About pages for each of the 
GSS cycles.  

7. User Interface
   Susan is still working on the census; it will be some time before 
all the data is mounted.  She reported that a phone has been installed 
in room 222.  Susan has not yet heard from Benny Colussi or Margaret 
Hendley about keying arrangement for this room.  None of the furniture 
required for room 222 had to be ordered.

8. Presentations
    Doug and Susan will be giving public demonstrations of UW-EDS.  The 
first of these will be on November 18 at 8:45 am in DCS; the focus of this
session will be on how patrons gain access to the datasets.  The second session 
will be DCS course 111 on November 23 at 1:30.  Susan will get 
registration information on Friday for the session on November 23.

9. UW Gazette
    Susan reported that Linda Howe of the Gazette had contacted her 
recently about doing an article on EDS.  Susan informed her that there 
will be a news release in January.  The task group recommended that there 
be no articles in the Gazette until January.  Doug will get in touch with 
Linda to explain this.

10. Statistics
     Susan suggested that the group should begin thinking about how to 
collect statistics such as databases searched, departmental affiliation 
of patrons, and staff time spent providing assistance; there should be 
some way to measure levels of activity.  Bill reported that for NFS 
mounted data such as the census it is possible to pull use data from the 
gopher logs; these would provide useful information whenever stub files 
are delivered.  For CANSIM (or any other datasets accessed by public 
logon) the Library can create a CANSIM log file.  Bill discussed the reasons 
why the CD-ROM software for recording use would not meet our needs for EDS.
Another solution would be to get site licences for our datasets and make 
access wide open.

11. Cataloguing
     Susan asked about the status of the cataloguing of EDS resources.  
It was agreed that the Library should have paper copies of codebooks and 
other documentation that is currently available only in electronic form.  
Bill indicated that we could have DocuTech make paper copies, which would 
then be forwarded to Cataloguing; Carol felt that it would be best to 
provide Graphic Services with the data in PostScript format.  Debbie 
stated that we could pay for GSS codebooks on the purchase order for the 
GSS datasets; similarly for other datasets.  Susan will talk to Betty 
Graf about our cataloguing requirement that related documents 
should be classified together.  Cataloguing staff can decide whether to 
use the LC classification or CODOC.  Susan indicated that Betty wants to 
produce full MARC records for this material.   

The next meeting will be on November 30 at 1:30.