University of Waterloo
             Electronic Data Service Task Group
               Minutes of Meeting Mar 8, 1995


Present:  Doug Morton (Chair)
                Albert Kemp
                Bill Oldfield (Secretary)
                Richard Pinnell
                Carol Vogt
                Shabiran Rahman
                Sue Moskal

Absent:   Debbie Tytko

1.   Minutes of the meeting of Mar. 1, 1995

     Deferred.

2.   Agenda Review & other minutiae

     Because room 428 is being used frequently at 3:00 on
     Wednesdays the possibility of starting earlier was
     discussed.  It was decided that the meeting should only
     run one and a half hours so starting at 1:30 and going
     to 3:00 should continue.

3.    CANSIM / EPAS

     Andrea Chappell is nearing completion of the set up for
     secure telnet access to the CANSIM program.  She is
     developing a method that could be applicable in may
     situations around campus which accounts for the extra
     time that has been required.

     Doug Morton discussed setting up training sessions for
     staff in the CANSIM program.  The request was received
     from J. MacDonald and M. Hendley.   There was a
     discussion about the intensity level  of the training.
     Doug was planning an intensive session but it was
     decided that a general introduction would be more
     appropriate because any complicated use should be
     referred to either Doug, Sue or Shabiran.  The program
     would include the Websim as well as the secure telnet
     access.  The different capabilities would be noted.

     PPG has suggested that a program of introduction to the
     academic departments should be implemented.  Bill
     Oldfield noted that a concentrated effort and all the
     data which is current on the library computer could be
     announced as available.  The raw data has been NFS
     mounted and all that is need is to create pages for
     each data set like the one that exists for VAW.  With
     these pages and path information for the NFS mount and
     all datasets we have are available.

     Finding time to perform this necessary work has been
     extremely difficult of all the committee members.  A
     request for help, like that being received by the
     UWLirc group, was suggested.  The first step in
     requesting help is to create a task list.  The creation
     of a task list will be placed on next weeks agenda and
     everyone was asked to list the tasks that they see on
     the groups agenda.

     Bill Oldfield said he would try to setup some of the
     basic pages over the next week.  Shabiran offered help
     in writing up some of the introductory information.

4.   Census, GSS data, VAW & LSDB

     Questions about access to the LSDB must be referred to
     Roger Mannell.  He is the one who provides the
     passwords needed to get to the data at this time.
     Roger said he would provide some selected datasets with
     separate codebooks for adding to the UW-EDS system
     within a couple of weeks.

     An update for PPG has been requested and after the task
     list has been prepared a date will be set.

     Albert demonstrated an up-to-date listing system for
     the NFS directories that can be used to find out where
     the various datasets reside.  It can be accessed
     through the following URL "
     http://www.lib.uwaterloo.ca/cgi-bin/uwonly/kemp/edsinv"

5.   User Interface

     Logos are needed for the UW-EDS web space.  Bill
     Oldfield will request logos from Linda Hastings.

     Introductory pages for the VAW dataset has been
     prepared by Doug.  They are ready to move up into the
     UW-EDS web space on the Library computer and the links
     changed.  Doug will do this.

     There was discussion of database acquisitions policy.
     Doug has prepared some preliminary data.  Sue mentioned
     that CMC should be involved and she will present it to
     CMC for the integration of the acquisition of numeric
     datasets into standard CMC acquisitions policy.

     Carol Vogt will take the referendum data received in
     SPSS program file format and extract the codebook
     needed for adding the set to the UW-EDS web space.

6.   ICPSR

     A meeting was held in Ottawa this Monday.  Information
     about the meeting was received only last Thursday.  The
     meeting was about establishing a federated membership
     group  of Canadian Libraries to join ICPSR.

     A package of information was received and Sue, Shabiran
     and Doug will examine the package and take it to PPG.
     Bruce had requested something by this Friday.  Sue and
     Shabiran will meeting tomorrow morning .  The deadline
     for response is March 31st but we will want to have
     something in Toronto earlier than that

     People were reminded to think about how we will deliver
     the ICPSR service to our clients.  ICPSR has a Web site
     at "http://icpsr.umich.edu/ICPSR_homepage.html".
     Checking out his resource may provide some of the
     information needed to play a service should the Library
     join the federated membership group.