ERIC Number: ED430579
Record Type: Non-Journal
Publication Date: 1999-Jun
Pages: 55
Abstractor: N/A
ISBN: ISBN-1-887334-68-8
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: N/A
Preserving the Whole: A Two-Track Approach to Rescuing Social Science Data and Metadata.
Green, Ann; Dionne, JoAnn; Dennis, Martin
Focusing on the experience of the Yale University (Connecticut) social science data preservation project, this document presents a case study of migration as a preservation strategy, exploring options for migrating data stored in a technically obsolete format and their associated documentation stored on paper. The first section provides background and a project description, an overview of the Yale Roper Collection of public opinion research data sets and paper records, and a summary of the literature search. The following nine steps of the data track are described in the second section: identify equipment; copy files from mainframe-based media to local hard disks; examine documentation; define the column binary format; develop standard variable-naming classifications; read in data with SAS (Statistical Analysis System) and SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences); identify migration formats; recode data files with SAS; and create spread ASCII data files without recoding. The next section addresses the documentation track, including software/equipment, TextBridge Pro optical character recognition software, PDF (portable document format) files from Adobe Capture, and HTML and SGML/XML marked-up files. Findings and recommendations are presented in the fourth section, including user evaluation, findings about data/documentation conversion, and recommendations to data producers. A glossary is included, and support documents are appended. Contains 18 references. (AEF)
Descriptors: Access to Information, Archives, Case Studies, Character Recognition, Computer Software, Data Conversion, Higher Education, Information Storage, Metadata, Optical Scanners, Preservation, Printed Materials, Social Science Research, Social Sciences
Council on Library and Information Resources, 1755 Massachusetts Ave., NW, Suite 500, Washington, DC 20036; Tel: 202-939-4750; Web site: http://www.clir.org/diglib ($15).
Publication Type: Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: Council on Library and Information Resources, Washington, DC. Digital Library Federation.
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A