2001 APSA panels

2001 APSA Short Course

2000 Software Awards

2001 CFP: Software Awards

Section Officers

The politics data center is a focal point for students and faculty seeking data for their research, and for faculty who wish to archive or disseminate the data gathered in the course of their research. Hundreds of politics data centers exist in colleges and universities all over the world; and thousands of faculty distribute data on the web, either their own, or by acting as contacts for other major data centers, such as the Roper Center, and ICPSR – assisting users in ordering, obtaining, and using data from these sources. If you are involved with, or have an interest in, starting a data center, getting your library to start one, or getting your college to offer access to one of the big archives -- this course is for you.

In this course we will both discuss the how-to's of the data center, in general, and introduce the Virtual Data Center (VDC)system. The VDC isan NSF-funded open source software package that functions as a "data center in a box". It supports both those who want to establish an archive of original data on the web, and those who want to provide convenient access to data from ICPSR (or other major data archives) for their college. (See http://thedata.org) This course will introduce the Virtual Data Center (VDC), show how to run the system, and how to build, share, and archive collections of data through it.

  During the course, participants will get an overview of:

• The advantages and disadvantages of setting up your own politics data center.
• Standards for documenting, cataloging and archiving data.
• Major sources of political-science data
• Public sources of data, and how to access them.
• Data membership organization and commercial data suppliers. Sources, access and licensing agreement.
• Data formats and data formatting issues

 The participants will also learn how to use the VDC system to:

• Documenting, cataloging and archiving original data.
• Make data available on the web for downloading, sub-setting, and on-line exploration
• Automatically retrieve and disseminate data from ICPSR, eliminating the need for an ICPSR contact to place data orders, and retrieve data on behalf of users.
• Effectively advertise data available (either to the public, or commercially) on your site, through standard "catalog-sharing" mechanisms.
• Creating ‘virtual collections’ (e.g. in support of a particular political science course) that span local and remote sources of data
• Controlling and auditing access to collections and materials

The workshop will be a mixture of overviews and hands-on session, and will give the participants concrete experience in creating an on-line politics data center. Copies of the VDC software and documentation will be distributed to participants.

There will be a nominal $5 fee for attendance, but this will be waived for students, if a request is written (or sent by e-mail) in advance.

  Contact:            

Dr. Micah Altman
G-4 Littauer Center, North Yard
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA 02138
617/625-7578

Micah_Altman@harvard.edu