Collaborative Data Mark-up & Distribution

Jacqueline Whyte ApplebyScholars Portal

October 17, 2013CASRAI

Ontario Data Documentation, Extraction Service, and Infrastructure

• An online data research tool developed between 2007 and 2009

• Jointly funded by the Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL) and OntarioBuys

• Developed to serve the Ontario university community, now expanding beyond the province

<odesi>

<odesi> in context

is managed by

which is a service of

which is governed by

21 Ontario university libraries

• Facilitate discovery, downloading, and analysis of data products

• Create a tool that is useful to both experienced and new researchers

<odesi> goals

<odesi>: where does the content come from?

Confidential Microdata available through the RDC

Public Use Microdata Files (PUMFs)

available through the DLI

Statistics Canada(data producers)

Other public productsavailable through

statcan.gc.ca

<odesi> : where does the content come from?

Public Use Microdata Files (PUMFs)

Available through the DLI

Other public productsAvailable through

statcan.gc.ca

ICPSR metadata

Canadian Gallup Polls data

Canadian Opinion Research Archive (CORA) data

<odesi>: the catalogue

<odesi>: the repository

Broad questions:

• “I want to write a paper on women in the workforce…”

<odesi> in use

Broad questions:

• “I’m interested in exploring on-reserve housing issues.”

<odesi> in use

Testing a hypothesis

• “How many Ontarians smoke today compared with 10 years ago?”

<odesi> in use

Testing a hypothesis

• “How many Ontarians smoke today compared with 50 years ago?”

<odesi> in use

• Metadata is bilingual and DDI-compliant

• Don’t need statistical software to run many analyses

• Surveys also include all supplementary material

• New surveys added daily

<odesi> highlights

• OCUL members (usually data librarians) apply for funding

• Funds pay for student employees, who are trained to mark up surveys using DDI 2 standards

• 2013-2014: Carleton, U of Ottawa, Queen’s and McMaster are participating, as well as Scholars Portal

MarkIt! program

MarkIt! program

• Be flexible; always be ready to shift priorities

• Establish best practices and adhere to them

• Make QA and editing each others’ work the norm (35% of datasets are marked up at more than one school)

MarkIt! program best practices

MarkIt! Program expansion?

Next up: Geospatial metadata?

Next up: Dataverse support?

Next up: Dataverse support?

Next up: Dataverse support?

Thank you!

http://odesi.cahttp://scholarsportal.info

http://geo.scholarsportal.infohttp://dataverse.scholarsportal.info

jacqueline@scholarsportal.info