TDR-OMG Minutes May 8, 2000
Present: Doug Horne, Richard Pinnell, Bo Wandschneider
This issue came up in the context of an attempt to provide a set of data from an Australian Election Study requested by a user at Waterloo. The providers of this data had to know the identity of all of the users of the data, which would require some customization on the part of the TDR (which does not gather such precise information currently). Bo and Doug responded that it is quite possible for us to provide whatever level of security and information gathering is necessary and that this involves a relatively small amount of effort. (password protection or a required form to be filled out can be added as one is already in place but needs to be activated). Bo will put up a sample form for Waterloo and WLU users to view and provide suggestions.
Richard addressed the topic of updating the CD-ROM holdings list. It was agreed that everyone should edit this list as changes occur at their local institutions. This can be accomplished using Dreamweaver and Guelph has this all ready to go (i.e. - they just need to know that somebody wants access to these files and they'll give them the necessary information.) It's important to note that now that all data that is available via the web will be in one list under "Data Available Online", the "CD-ROM Holdings" page will list only those products strictly available in-house at each location.
There was discussion of the list of available data on the first page under "Data Available Online". This list grew with the service and the categories are not mutually exclusive or particularly intuitive. There is some difficulty in creating a new hierarchy as users may look for data by subject or issuing agency (or other criteria), so a simple subject arrangement will not serve all needs (and many datasets cover many topics at once... eg. General Social Survey). Richard will take this issue back to EDS to discuss possibilities for a more intuitive arrangement.
It has been suggested that Shabiran will take over the production of the Data Links newsletter for the next issue with the OMG having final editorial say over each issue. This was agreed to by the group and the next newsletter will be produced for September. It was suggested that Bo and Helene should be the contact people for each of the institutions when content is being collected for a new issue. It was agreed that the first week of September would be the release date for the next issue.
The issue of statistics gathering (re: use of the service) was discussed again. Richard expressed that Waterloo has a real need for use statistics by department and the type or level of user. Several suggestions for gathering this type of information were mentioned and Richard will take these back to EDS for further consideration. Bo will also produce a sample form that would have to be filled out by each user when entering the "Online Data" area of the site, and EDS may edit this form to suit their needs. (this will not be difficult to put in place or modify). It was clear from the discussion that the needs of each institution will be quite different for this type of information. Guelph is already able to determine a significant amount of user information from web-logs, and we have not determined what WLU may like to see. It is very possible (and most likely) that the mechanism for gathering user information will vary with the needs of the institutions. This does not cause a technical problem and can be put in place quickly, but will have to be coordinated and monitored by OMG and interested people at each institution (it should be noted that there are significant impacts on the user if a form needs to be submitted for each use of the data and this should be considered when implementing this type of tool).
Our discussion of GIS projects continued. We are still unsure about the nature of the database being produced at WLU and Doug will look into this in more detail. While we know it is based on FGDC standards we are not sure what subset of those standards is being utilized. It is also very important to note that Endeavour will be demonstrating new features on May 24th which should include Encompass. It was agreed that before we decide to do anything we should see these new features and determine what the FGDC database might allow us to do that Encompass does not (if anything). In the mean time Doug will contact Grant Head to obtain a sample or detailed description of their database.
There was some discussion of disk capacity. It is clear that we are running out of disk space (in fact, we can not mount any major data sets at this point in time). It is also clear that we do not have detailed forecasts of disk needs or potential demand for data over the next year. While it is very difficult to forecast this demand it was agreed that we need to develop some type of document to describe our disk needs so that we might continue to add data in the future. As a beginning Doug is working on a detailed description of current disk utilization and a list of possible uses of disk space in the immediate (and more distant) future. This issue is a priority and will have to be revisited in future meetings.