Vince Gray and (Moira Russell?)
The Internet Data Library System, Version 2: a Canadian Data Delivery Experience

vince@uwo.ca

The Social Science Computing Laboratory has provided a custom interface to data to the students and faculty of the University of Western Ontario since 1986. Since 1997, data has been delivered through the world-wide web (through the somewhat grandly-named "Internet Data Library System"). Access to the data is controlled by IP address.

The current version of IDLS is based upon commercially available software running on Windows 2000 platforms: the Inmagic and SQL database management systems. Java scripts and Perl and Visual Basic programs are also used. Software limitations and work-arounds will be discussed, along with the migration of data (and metadata) from prior data delivery systems.

Eighteen universities in Canada now use the IDLS to deliver at least some data to their staff and students. IDLS delivers raw data in ASCII form to the desktop, along with personalized codebooks and one or more of SAS, SPSS, and Stata command files. It can also serve binary files (e.g., Beyond 20/20 tables, MapInfo maps, Excel spreadsheets) to the end user. An IDLS contact person at each university has access to a usage reporting system. It is hoped that at least one of these IDLS contacts will discuss their remote access experiences.

Vince Gray
University of Western Ontario