Announcements
ICPSR has published a generic codebook stylesheet written for the Version 2.0 DTD. This stylesheet transforms codebooks written in DDI XML into single page HTML documents that can be easily read via Web browser. Users can view examples of XML displayed via this stylesheet on our Marked-up Codebooks page. The version 2.0 stylesheet also represents a significant improvement over the previous stylesheet in that it displays nearly every element in the DTD.
A new version of the DDI's Document Type Definition (DTD) is now available. Developed by the DDI Committee through funding from Health Canada and the National Science Foundation (SES0136447), Version 2.0 offers the following enhancements:
It contains the aggregate extension elements (nCubes).
Internal formatting elements from the TEI specification have been declared to permit formatting within elements.
New geographic elements have been added: Geographic Bounding Polygon, Polygon, Point, G-Ring Latitude, G-Ring Longitude, and Geographic Map.
See the comments history in the DTD itself for a list of other changes to the DTD since Version 1.0.
In addition to making available the French translation of the DDI tag library on their Web site, the Quetelet Centre has also created a project called ORDS (Outil de Recherche de Données en Sciences sociales). ORDS is the first French search engine that enables users to get metadata about social science data from within several data archives in France.
It is available at the following url: http://www.centre.quetelet.cnrs.fr/ords/.
The DDI Alliance Steering Committee, composed of representatives from the Alliance Host Institutions and Associations, has written a Strategic Plan (PDF 11K) for the Alliance to guide its activities over the next three years.
The plan focuses on five broad strategic goals in the areas of organization, funding, standards, outreach, and technical development and provides detail on why these goals are crucial to the success of the DDI.
On May 28, 2003, the DDI Alliance held an open meeting at the 2003 IASSIST conference in Ottawa. For information on what was discussed at that meeting, please consult our meeting minutes.
On February 8, 2003, the Steering Committee for the newly created Data Documentation Initiative (DDI) Alliance met for the first time in Washington, DC, to formally start up Alliance operations. Members of the Steering Committee include the following individuals from Alliance host institutions and associations:
Ann Green, Yale University, representing the International Association of Social Science Information Service and Technology (IASSIST)
Myron Gutmann, representing the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR)
Bjorn Henrichsen, Norwegian Social Science Data Archive, representing the Council of European Social Science Data Services (CESSDA)
Ekkehard Mochmann, Zentralarchiv fur Empirische Sozialforschung (ZA), representing the International Federation of Data Organizations (IFDO)
Richard Rockwell, representing the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research
Mary Vardigan, ICPSR, DDI Alliance Director
Peter Joftis, ICPSR, DDI Alliance Associate Director
The DDI is a project of the social science research community to develop an international specification for technical documentation describing social science data. Version 2.0 of the specification, which is written in XML, is now available on the DDI Web site at www.ddialliance.org. Development of Version 2.0 was supported in part by the National Science Foundation.
The DDI effort, begun with ICPSR sponsorship and in-kind contributions from members, is being restructured as a self-sustaining membership Alliance. Membership in the Alliance is open to for-profit or not-for-profit educational, commercial, or governmental organizations that want to have a voice in the decision-making process for the standard. Members are entitled to send one representative to meetings of the new DDI Expert Committee, whose first formal meeting will be held in Ann Arbor in conjunction with the Official Representatives meeting on October 12-13, 2003.
For more information on joining this effort, please contact the DDI Secretariat, which is housed at ICPSR, at: secretariat@ddialliance.org.
Alliance Expert Committee to Meet in October
The newly formed Expert Committee of the DDI Alliance will meet for the first time in Ann Arbor, MI, on Sunday afternoon and all day Monday, October 12 and 13, following the Biennial Meeting of ICPSR Official Representatives. Discussion will focus on:
The Strategic Plan (PDF 11K) for the DDI Alliance developed by the Alliance Steering Committee
Ways to implement recommendations in the Plan and move the DDI specification forward
Optimal organization of the Expert Committee
Development of a data model describing social and behavioral data
More details about the meeting will be available later in the summer.
XML Schema are now available for versions 1.2.2 and 1.3, thanks to the efforts of Mark Diggory of Harvard University. The schema are listed alongside the codebook DTDs on the Codebook page.
The DDI site now contains a page listing tools developed specially for use with the DDI. The DDI-Specific Markup Tools page now includes information on utilities supplied by Nesstar and by the Computer-assisted Survey Methods program at Berkeley. Note also that the XSL Stylesheet page links to stylesheets created by the University of Guelph.
To submit your own tools for this page, please send mail to ddi@icpsr.umich.edu.
Looking for detailed information on the codebook DTD? Try consulting our recently updated tag library.
An informal open meeting of the members of the original DDI Committee, the DDI Alliance Steering Committee, and all prospective members and other interested individuals will be held during the upcoming IASSIST conference in Ottawa, Ontario, on Wednesday, May 28, 2003, 5:O0-6:30. The meeting will invite a discussion of where the DDI is going and what the Alliance hopes to achieve.
The first official meeting of the Alliance Expert Committee will be held in Ann Arbor, MI, at ICPSR headquarters on Sunday afternoon and all day Monday, October 12 and 13, 2003, after the ICPSR Biennial Meeting of Official Representatives concludes. More information about the meeting and about procedures for joining the Alliance will be available soon.
The Codebook DTD page of the site now presents two versions of the DDI DTD: a stable version -- Version 1.2.2, designated with an even number -- and a development version -- Version 1.3, designated with an odd number. Version 1.3 contains the aggregate data extension, which is still under review, and also incorporates TEI tags for internal formatting.
ICPSR has established a listserv for individuals interested in discussing issues surrounding implementations of the DDI specification. To subscribe to the list, go to the DDI Users' Listserv page.
Wendy Thomas, Minnesota Population Center, University of Minnesota, has prepared a DDI to Dublin Core and MARC record mapping. The table of equivalencies that Wendy created is actually excerpted from a publication entitled "DDI, the Data Documentation Initiative: An Introduction to the Standard and Its Role in Social Science Data Access."
