Steven Citron-Pousty, Ann Green, and Julie Linden
StatCat: Building a Statistical Data Finder

julie.linden@yale.edu

Migrating Yale's Social Science Data Archive web-based catalog from a mainframe-legacy format to a SQL database made up of DDI elements entailed not only technical issues -- designing database structure, parsing ASCII records into database fields, etc. -- but philosophical issues as well. Scrutinizing the old catalog raised questions about the data we choose to collect, maintain, and catalog, and about designing the new application to capitalize on developments such as XML and more direct access to data at Yale and beyond. This presentation will focus upon the features, design, and implementation of StatCat, its relationship to the DDI, and future enhancements and expansion of StatCat into a portal to social science numeric resources.

Steven Citron-Pousty
Manager, Social Science Research Services
Social Science Statistical Laboratory
Yale University
steven.citron-pousty@yale.edu
tel: (203) 432-3278
fax: (203) 432-6976

Ann Green
Director, Social Science Research Services
Social Science Statistical Laboratory
Yale University
ann.green@yale.edu
tel: (203) 432-3278
fax: (203) 432-6976

Julie Linden
Data & Electronic Services Librarian
Social Science Libraries & Information Services
Yale University
julie.linden@yale.edu
tel: (203) 432-3310
fax: (203) 432-8979