The IASSIST Quarterly (IQ) volume 32 2008 contains a collection of the 1, 2, 3, and 4 issues into a single issue for 2008. Nikos Askitas is the head of the International Data Service Center of the Institute for the Study of Labor in Germany (IZA). At the 2008 IASSIST conference he presented what is [...]

The US Open Government Directive, released on December 8, 2009, instructs all federal agencies to provide high-value information to the public online in open, accessible, machine-readable formats. This adds to the momentum already in place at Data.gov to “increase public access to high value, machine readable datasets generated by the Executive Branch of the Federal [...]

From the DDI Directions Newsletter: “The DDI Alliance is pleased to announce that Chuck Humphrey (Chair), University of Alberta, and Mari Kleemola (Vice Chair), Finnish Social Science Data Archive, have been elected to lead the DDI Expert Committee, beginning January 1, 2010.  Chuck has been the Head of the Data Library at the University of Alberta [...]

The 2009 William H. Flanigan Award for Distinguished Service as an ICPSR Official Representative was presented to Diane Geraci, Associate Director for Information Resources at Massachusetts Institute of Technology Libraries. Diane is a long time IASSIST supporter and former Admin Committee member. Congratulations, Diane! At the same ceremony, friends of IASSIST Merrill Shanks and Steven Ruggles [...]

IASSIST member Nancy McGovern was recently inducted as a Fellow by the Society of American Archivists at its August meeting in Austin, Texas.  SAA Fellow is an honor that recognizes outstanding contributions to the archival profession. Nancy has been Digital Preservation Officer (DPO) at ICPSR since 2006 and brought a substantial record of accomplishment to her [...]

Students with research interests in scientific data management, sharing and reuse have a unique opportunity to participate in the Open Data fellowship program. Open Data is an Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) sponsored by NSF. Open Data fellows engage in a vibrant set of research activities at the University [...]

Vintage Infographics From the 1930s, Flowing Data (Sept. 11, 2009). Some examples from Willard Cope Brinton’s 1939 book Graphic Presentation. - jim

U-M’s Gutmann to head NSF Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Directorate, University of Michigan News Service, July 27, 2009. Gutmann, who specializes in historical demography and population-environment relationships, currently directs the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research at the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR). He begins his NSF position Nov. 2. - Jim Jacobs

There was a lot of hype when the new search engine WolframAlpha was launched earlier this year.  An article in the current issue of Technology Review does a better job of explaining how it works and how it fits in with other search engines. It notes that the numeric information it uses is “curated” by [...]

Check out this week’s Fifth Wave cartoon: http://www.gocomics.com/thefifthwave/2009/06/21

05 June 2009 13:19 A week has passed since IASSIST 2009. I hope most of you have made it safely back home by now – and are ready to refresh the memories by watching the conference webcasts and viewing presentations. Webcasts of all three plenaries and Thursday and Friday’s concurrent sessions in the Small Auditorium are [...]

As you may have heard during last week’s wonderful IASSIST meeting in Tampere, there are still spaces available in the ICPSR Summer Program course on DDI, to be held at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, on July 13-16. The course is titled “Documenting Data Using DDI 3.0: Supporting Research, Collection Management, and Access,” and [...]

The IASSIST Quarterly IQ Vol. 31 issue 3&4 is now available on the web: http://iassistdata.org/publications/iq/iqvol31.html This issue will only be available on the web. There will be no printed version mailed out to the membership. This double issue is the work of the authors and their articles are introduced below. We are presenting an integrated double issue of [...]