ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries


728 / C&RL News

Global data issues raised at IASSIST’s 17th annual 
conference

“Data in the Global Village: Stewardship of an 
Expanding Resource,” the central theme of the 
17th annual conference o f the International Asso­
ciation for Social Science Information Service and 
Technology (IASSIST), expressed IA SSIST mem­
bers’ concerns for managing and sharing computer- 
readable data gathered on a wide range of issues 
facing our global community. The theme also 
touched upon the need to care for and preserve an 
ever-expanding volume of computer-readable data.

IA SSIST members have been in the business o f 
acquiring, processing, administering, preserving, 
and distributing computer-readable data since 1974. 
Among its members are data librarians and archi­
vists, information specialists, social scientists, re­
searchers, computing personnel, planners, and ad­
ministrators from government and private sectors. 
IASSIST conferences are stimulating because of 
the dialogue which is promoted amongst the varied 
attendees both during the formal presentations and 
during breaks and unstructured time.

Held in Edmonton, Alberta, from May 14-17, 
1991, this year’s program was particularly relevant 
for academic and research librarians. The plenary 
sessions, concurrent sessions, round table discus­
sions, and workshops highlighted the divergent 
approaches to providing services for computer- 
readable social data and the convergent interests of 
the international participants.

The first plenary session, “Global Environmental 
Change: Data Problems and the Social Sciences,” 
presented by David Rhind, Economic and Social 
Research Council, Scotland, focused on the ur­
gency o f understanding global environmental 
change and the variety of environmental change 
data which will be collected.

The second plenaiy session, “Data in the Archi­
val Village,” gave both U.S. and Canadian perspec­
tives on issues relating to managing archival pro­
grams for electronic records. There are many hurdles 
to overcome at the national level to identify and ac­
quire electronic records. Much support is needed to 
meet the archival agendas set forth by the speakers.

The third plenary session, “National and Interna­
tional Statistical Systems,” featured speakers from 
the Statistical Services Branch o f the United Na­
tions, Statistics Canada, the Central Laboratory for 
Social and Economic Measurement in the Russia, 
and the Economic and Social Research Council 
Data Archive at the University o f  Edinburgh, Scot­
land. Problems with counting the global village as

well as the current state of various national and 
international social statistics were discussed.

The concurrent sessions included these topics: 
remote access and new user services, new data 
description systems, evaluation and appraisal of 
machine-readable data files, text file issues for 
research and teaching, institutional responses to 
data access issues, special data collections on global 
change, archival standards o f optical media, new 
software/hardware applications for data libraries, 
data from the source: the data producers, birthing 
pains o f data libraries, electronic products and 
depository library programs, international public- 
use microdata files, designing and producing your 
own CD-ROM , historical data collections, and find­
ing the path to distributed computing with central­
ized data.

O f particular interest to librarians was the session 
on “Birthing Pains of Library Data Services.” Gaetan 
Drolet, Université Laval, shared his experiences as 
a newcomer. His talk, “DATA + LIBRARIAN = 
DATA LIBRARIA N ?” emphasized the challenges 
he faces moving from the responsibilities as a social 
science librarian to those of a data librarian. E. 
Christine Hayward, University of Calgary, discussed 
a proposal for a data library service at Calgary. The 
library recognizes data service as part o f its mandate 
to provide access to public information. Doug Poff, 
University of Alberta, spoke about Alberta’s strate­
gic library plan which centers on becoming a “vir­
tual library” whereby a range of remote services and 
resources will be available through networks. The 
focus o f academic libraries will truly shift from 
institutional ownership and self-sufficiency to re­
ciprocal access to research collections including 
data and other informational resources.

“Institutional Responses to Data Access Issues” 
provided an opportunity for discussion on changes 
in library school curricula in response to data access 
needs, data resource projects and programs of the 
Research Libraries Group, and data access issues in 
the decentralized ’90s. Judith Rowe, Princeton 
University, pointed out that many academic institu­
tions have a computing czar who is as likely to be a 
librarian in charge of “computing and information” 
as a computer scientist. Jim Coleman, Research 
Libraries Group, spoke about R L G ’s recent efforts 
to raise the general awareness o f its membership to 
data resources and services and about R L G ’s future 
activities in this area.

(Cont. on next p age)



December 1991 / 729

(Standards cont. from  page 727)

to reimburse the institution for such use under the 
guidance o f institutional policy.

II.E.3.b. No staff member should use at home 
any object or item that is a part of the library’s 
collections or under the guardianship of the library, 
or use any other property, supplies, or resources 
of the library except for the official business of the 
institution. To the extent that circumstance or 
special policies warrant exceptions, the circum­
stances or policies should be a matter of written 
record.

II .F . Confidentiality
Special collections librarians, whose work in­

volves intimate knowledge of the work of research­
ers, the library’s relations with donors and booksell­
ers, and other material of a confidential nature, 
must be scrupulous in keeping this information 
confidential.
II.F . 1. Special collections librarians must keep con­
fidential information about the activities and re­
search of their readers which they gain in perfor­
mance of their professional duties.

I I.F .1.a. Exceptions may be made to this provi­
sion in cases where, for the advancement o f schol­
arship, the reader has signed a written agreement to 
waive any claim to confidentiality in general or in 
specific instances. ■  ■

(Scholars cont. fr o m  page 720)

The roundtable meeting ended with a discussion 
on how the future may be influenced. A number of 
scholars presented plans for projects that would 
create electronic publications available for shared 
access. Among these are the American Association 
for the Advancement of Science’s online medical 
journal, a computerized dictionary of American 
literary terms, and a database of astronomy litera­
ture with natural language indexing. Common to 
these projects are the post-publication issues of 
storage, physical copies made at some point in time,

and archival and preservation issues.
Academic librarians are already facing these 

access and archival issues with established pro­
grams at a number of large research institutions. 
They are positioned to play a key advisoiy role, 
guiding publishers and scholars in the design of 
electronic products that take into consideration the 
information needs of future generations who will 
use the scholarly information we are recording and 
distributing today.— Patricia E. Sabosik, E ditor & 
Publisher, Choice ■  ■

(IASSIST cont. fr o m  previous page)

In the session on text file issues, John Price- 
Wilkins, University of Michigan, gave a paper on 
“Text Files in Libraries: Present Foundations and 
Future Directions.” He stressed that users of text 
need generalized data suitable for use with a variety 
of software tools, as well as access to these resources 
in a networked environment. Research libraries 
have a responsibility to build electronic collections 
conformant with evolving standards for text encod­
ing and to facilitate access to these resources out­
side the libraiy. The session closed with an impres­
sive demonstration of a system developed at UM to 
provide access to text files.

“Electronic Products and Depository Library 
Programs” was another session where academic 
librarians presented views on providing data ser­
vices within a library context. Ray Jones, University 
of Florida, a long-time advocate of library involve­
ment with providing access to census data regard­
less of format, shared his experiences with provid­
ing services over a period of two decades. Juri 
Stratford, University of California at Davis, high­
lighted the advantages and disadvantages of U.S. 
depository libraries receiving a deluge of electronic

products, largely numeric, on CD-ROM.
Another hallmark of IASSIST conferences is the 

workshops .Fourhalf-day sessions were offered and 
included “Starting a Data Library,” “Living with 
UNIX,” “Financial Time Series,” and “Using Inter­
active Graphics and Statistical Data in the Class­
room.” Led by Ilona Einowski, University of Cali­
fornia at Berkeley, and Jean Stratford, University of 
California at Davis, the workshop on “Starting a 
Data Library” raised many questions for those 
attending. While there is no one solution or organi­
zational structure for data libraries, the various 
activities involved in organizing and operating a 
data library were debated by participants.

I attended the conference with the support of the 
ACRL Professional Liaison Committee and my 
home institution. As a member of the IASSIST 
Program Committee I worked to promote aca­
demic libraries as partners in providing access to 
computer-readable text and social data. The aca­
demic librarians who attended the conference and 
presented papers assisted in reaching that goal.—  
Diane Geraci, social science an d data librarian, 
State University o f  New York at Binghamton ■  ■