CESSDA Expert
    Seminar Sept. 1-2, 2000, Tampere, Finland

Updated 14.6.2000

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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 BorgRein Murakas
director, FSDdirector, ESSDA

 

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