The ICPSR Summer Program is offering the following weeklong courses this year focused on data curation and data services.
The workshop will be held from July 28 to august 1, 2014, and will explore and apply the concepts and benefits of life cycle principles for data curation, from selecting and preparing data for archiving to optimizing and promoting data for reuse. ICPSR social science quantitative datasets and UK Data Archive qualitative and cross-disciplinary data collections will serve as case studies, and participants will track the datasets as they make their way through the data assessment, review, processing, curation, and publication pipeline.
Participants will learn about and gain proficiency in the full range of life cycle activities: data review and preparation; confidential data management; effective documentation practices; how to create, comply with, and evaluate required data management plans; digital repository requirements and assessment; data dissemination and publication; and running user support and promotional activities for data.
The workshop will be held from august 1-4, 2014. It is aimed at individuals who manage or support local services for ICPSR and other research data for quantitative analysis. The workshop is organized around four data service areas: collections, users, access, and preservation.
The structure of the workshop will rely on presentations, participant collaborations, and hands-on exercises. Fundamental topics are covered, including conducting a data reference interview, searching for social science data, interpreting data documentation, coping with various dissemination formats, accessing and subsetting data through web-based tools (e.g. SDA and Nesstar), selecting and downloading ICPSR data, and options for local data delivery.