| Janet
Eisenhauer Smith A User's Perspective on DDI As the Data Analyst/Archivist for the Center for Demography of Health and Aging at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, I am responsible for acquiring (and providing access to) unique longitudinal and comparative survey and medical records data on health and aging. I am also responsible for publicizing the availability of these data in order to generate interest among the research community in secondary analyses. As a part of the latter task, I am responsible for creating comprehensive data documentation sufficient to support high quality secondary analysis in the long term. I am an Agricultural Economist by training: not a programmer, librarian, or archivist. I have multiple duties (jack of all trades, master of none), so the existence of tools allowing me to create useful standardized documentation quickly and efficiently is critical. Over the past several months I have experimented with software utilities for creating DDI-compliant documentation including NESSTAR's xmlGenerator, the University of Minnesota's MADDIE, and the WordPerfect xml utilities. I will present an assessment of these utilities and offer a wish list for future development. Software developers and users: if you are aware of other utilities in development, please let me know how I can acquire the code for testing. Data Analyst/Archivist |