The Common Object Registry Keeping visitors in contextwww.statcan.ca Paula Fedeski-Koundakjian Internet Content Manager Dissemination Division, Statistics Canada

The holdings We have survey metadata for more than 650 surveys We have more than 7,500 documents officially releasing survey data and publications

More holdings We have some 10,000 publications, products and services in the online catalogue. In CANSIM, we have nearly 2000 detailed tables containing over 18 million series.

And more holdings And finally, in Canadian Statistics, we have more than 400 summary tables, most of which are created automatically from CANSIM tables.

The challenge When visitors find an item in one data holding, they want to see that item in the context of the others. Daily release Link to Survey information Link to CANSIM tables Link to Canadian Statistics table Link to Publication

The problem It is impossible to create handmade links among related items because of  the size of our holdings, magnified by duplications;  the huge maintenance task; and  the inevitability of error.

The solution Common object registry The Daily Online catalogue Canadian Statistics tables CANSIM tables Survey information

What does COR do?

The Daily

CANSIM

Canadian Statistics

The online catalogue

The Daily by subject

Coming soon… COR links in a redesigned survey metadata interface.

Statistics by Subject: A new website module providing maintenance-free, fully automated access to all the objects in COR by subject (theme and sub-theme).

Automated, maintenance-free links inside HTML publications.

How does COR work?

COR stores only six objects 1.Themes (and sub-themes) 2.Surveys 3.Items in the online catalogue 4.CANSIM tables 5.Canadian Statistics tables 6.Daily releases

COR tracks only two things  Object descriptions (ID, type, and English and French labels)  Relationships (the objects that are related to this one)

Type of object Object’s label Object’s ID number OBJECT’S DESCRIPTION OBJECT’S RELATIONSHIPS WITH OTHER OBJECTS

Holdings teams maintain it The team responsible for each data holding maintains  its own objects in COR  the relationships it “owns” in COR

Advantages The holdings no longer contain  external objects, or  hyperlinks to external objects.  Work and responsibility are distributed among many people.

Relationships within COR Surveys Daily releases Items in the online catalogue CANSIM tables Canadian Statistics tables Themes Sub- themes

Difficulties  CORification of data holdings is not simple or quick.  The taxonomy must be applied strategically and uniformly across holdings.  Imperfections are inevitable.  Registration of Daily releases in COR could not be done wholesale or retroactively.  Data must be in CANSIM for Canadian Statistics tables to show.  COR does not capture all data holdings (data not available in CANSIM, data in other databases, e.g., Census of Population and Agriculture data).

What’s next  Launch Statistics by Subject in the spring.  Create new interfaces for COR output which are harmonized and have high usability.  Design databases that make COR redundant…

For more information about COR, contact Marc Pelchat Head, Applications Development Dissemination Division Statistics Canada (613)