Providing Social Science Data Services Diane Geraci Jim Jacobs Chuck Humphrey Strategies for Design and Operation

Introductions The Three Data Amigos (sans one) The Class

Who are you? Who are we? Name and institutional affiliation Are you responsible for data services (some or all) at your institution? – If YES, what is the current situation for data services at your institution? – If NO, what is your relationship to data services? Are you the ICPSR Official Representative or Designate OR? Is there anything that you really hope to learn this week?

The week in a nutshell The syllabus The daily schedule – 9:00 to 5:00, with possible time off for good behaviour – Discussion groups – Exercises and computing labs – Light homework assignments in the evenings that introduce topics for the next day

Our teaching style We try to accommodate a mix of learning styles: something to hear, see, touch and do. We invite discussion: don’t hesitate to ask questions or share an experience. We’re a tag-team and share instruction time. We have more material than we’ll ever get through, but have packages of information for you to take for future reference. Our Powerpoint slides will be available online.

Our professional orientation We teach from a service orientation, which underlies the ‘why-we-do’ and ‘what-we-do’ topics that we will be teaching We are advocates of the open data access movement, which makes us strong supporters of data sharing and data preservation We promote the development of a data culture to assist society in identifying and conducting informed public debates on major issues

Our professional orientation Access to data is an extension of our other professional interests – open (accessible and accountable) government, – privacy in the information age, – technology and social responsibility, – preserving our digital research heritage through data preservation, – statistical and data literacy, – knowledge transfer, and – other stuff

Why do we teach this course? We believe that we have an important message to share. We enjoy meeting and working with professionals who have data services as part of their job responsibilities or who are merely interested in data. We are excited by learning; and teaching this course has required us to be continuous learners.

Why do we teach this course? We learn from the participants in this course.