CESSDA Data Catalogue can now be searched based on keywords
A new version of the CESSDA Data Catalogue (CDC) has been released. The most important improvement is the ability to filter search results based on keywords. In addition, the user experience has been improved.
Various changes were made to the user interface. The most significant change for users is the function that enables filtering of search results immediately based on keywords. The visibility of topic classifications and keywords on the individual data description pages has been improved too. Other improvements focus on enhancing the user experience and making it easier to give feedback. In addition, some accessibility improvements were made and an accessibility statement is now available for the CDC.
The metadata of all datasets stored at FSD are also available through the CESSDA Data Catalogue. The catalogue provides combined access to all data descriptions from the CESSDA archives, which enables researchers and students to find research data that suits their needs in all European data archives with a single search. The datasets themselves still need to be downloaded from each archive separately. The CDC contains a total of almost 38,000 dataset descriptions, which come from 17 social science oriented data archives.
Metadata descriptions are largely harmonised to enable multilingual searching. Some archives submit their metadata to the CDC through the Kuha2 interface developed by FSD. FSD has been involved in the development of the CDC for several years, and in 2023 responsible for the technical maintenance of the Catalogue alongside CESSDA's own technical team. The multilingual search support is based on the CESSDA Controlled Vocabulary (CVS). In the previous project period, FSD was responsible for managing the vocabulary content work as the product owner.
