Invitation to the
CESSDA Expert Seminar 2000:
Data Documentation with Special Issues on Data Security
September 1-2, FSD, Tampere, Finland
The Finnish Social Science Data Archive (FSD) and the Estonian Social
Science Data Archive (ESSDA) have the pleasure to invite you to a
jointly organised CESSDA Expert seminar 2000 in Tampere. Due to timing of
other international conferences the yearly Fall meeting will take place a
little bit earlier than usual, between September 1 - 2.
The main topic of the seminar is the utilisation of the Data Documentation
Initiative (DDI). After a few years of development, the new documentation standard's first version has now been released. As the homepage of DDI
states, "version 1 of the
DDI DTD, along with a Tag Library providing instructions and examples, is
now available for use by the social science research community". Also, "the
DDI Committee encourages researchers to use and evaluate the DTD and to
send comments on their experiences".
At the moment, many CESSDA member archives are involved in DDI related
projects. Several data archives have to solve questions of converting data
documentation to DDI, while some are using DDI DTD as their first data
documentation standard. Although the DDI already is a widely accepted format, its development is still in progress, which makes the importance of this issue undisputed. The seminar will cover at least the following aspects of using DDI:
- an overview on the process history and of the state of development
- choosing DDI information elements for documentation
- converting other data documentation formats to DDI and starting DDI documentation from scratch
- procedures and standards for filling in DDI information elements
- DDI software tools
- search tools for data documented with DDI and
- need for recommendations in using first version of DDI DTD
The first seminar day (Sept 1) will mainly consist of plenary sessions and
presentations on DDI related issues. During the second day there will be
two meetings for a DDI workshop, where different archives are expected to
present short papers and give overviews on their current practices in
preparing DDI documentation. Presentations should cover information on the
selection of information elements that are used and provide notes on the
possible documenting practises used in filling in the elements.
The second seminar day will include a plenary session on data
security, especially data viruses and concurrent workshops on
preservation and data security. The organisers wish that the
participants of this workshop give a short overview on the technical routines
in their archives' data security, including information on virus checks and
backing up data. More detailed information for presentations will be provided in
the near future after the final seminar programme has been finished.
FSD and ESSDA wish the representatives of your organisation warmly welcome
to the seminar!
Sami Borg | Rein Murakas |
director, FSD | director, ESSDA |
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