DDI in Ontario Putting the Pieces Together A. Michelle Edwards, Ph.D. Data Resource Centre, University of Guelph

Infant Years In 2002 “Trials and Tribulations of Developing DDI-Compliant Codebooks at the University of Guelph“ Move our HTML codebooks to XML DDI-compliant codebooks

Infant Years Met many challenges Learning all about DDI Learning XML and XSL Developed an initial tagset – based on our HTML codebooks → expanded as needed -

Toddler Stage Nesstar became available Easy to install Server Easy User Interface – create metadata Too much time and resources to retrofit our homegrown system Started migration to Nesstar - 2004

Teenage Years Nesstar in full production in Fall 2005 Used Publisher along with homegrown scripts to create DDI codebooks Started with approx. 700 studies – Now 895 studies Available to: University of Guelph Wilfrid Laurier University University of Waterloo

Teenage Years Training available for members of 3 Universities On-line tutorials Workshops Seminars Tweaking of system – few upgrades along the way

Teenage Years Continue to add tags to enhance the metadata available for users Adding Question text when we can Faculty and students like the new system – still growing pains along the way

Making friends along the way Throughout this journey - worked with members of the Ontario Academic community Many institutions have homegrown systems Through DLI – training Help with new Nesstar specs and setups

DDI Friends in Ontario Ontario institutions Queens University Carleton University Université d’Ottawa Windsor University University of Toronto University of Western Ontario

Newest DDI friend Statistics Canada author divisions and DLI are looking at creating DDI codebooks for dissemination Joining forces and creating a high quality and consistent DDI document for all surveys available through DLI

Pieces of the puzzle…. Ontario Universities at different stages of DDI growth Statistics Canada Research Data Centres Universities in other parts of the country looking at DDI or using DDI

How do the pieces fit? “One stop-shopping” IDEAL SITUATION Central dissemination point for Universities Quality metadata (DDI codebooks) and data “One stop-shopping”

How do we accomplish this? By taking small steps…. Ontario project: Developing best practices for creating DDI compliant codebooks Create complete codebooks Make available through a central portal to participating OCUL members

Next steps Interest in partner provinces Start developing collaborations between interested institutions to avoid duplication Can we develop a National one stop-shop?

Ontario Universities Statistics Canada Other Provincial Partners STC Research Data Centres

Complete puzzle – one stop shopping for data and accompanying metadata for all