Upgrading the Computational Instrumentation of the Inter- University Consortium for Political and Social Research

目前正在提供资金，用于更新大学间政治和社会研究联盟的计算工具。其目标是提高该联盟作为社会科学研究和教学机构的职能能力；提高其以更有效的方式提供服务的能力；并使其做好准备，以便在计算机和信息技术取得进展并被认为适用时利用这些进步。通过这一努力，通货膨胀和其他增加会费的压力将得到缓解，因此，能够订阅该联盟的学院和大学的数量将继续包括不太好的.to.do和更偏远的地理位置更集中的大型机构。总体效果将是维持甚至增加有权接触该联盟的社会科学家的数量，并为利用该联盟的海量数据打开新的机会之窗。从而有助于扩大和加深我们对社会进程的理解。该联盟是一个拥有320多个学院和大学附属机构的组织。它充当计算机可读数据的储存库和分发者，可供社会科学分析使用。这类数据包括但不限于，根据国家科学基金会补助金收集的被认为对二次分析有用的数据(该联盟是社会和经济科学司新的存档政策下的首选储存库)，以及由联邦统计机构置于联盟分发之下的公共使用数据文件。来自许多其他来源的数据也构成了该财团多方面档案的一部分。通过该联盟的工作，大大减少了数据使用和数据共享的技术和经济障碍，有效地实现了数据使用的民主化，增加了昂贵数据收集的效用，并获得了更大的研究和教学“回报”。该联盟作为科学核查和复制资源的价值及其作为从多个角度提供关于社会现象的定量信息的本质，或许会带来更大的好处。建议的奖励将提供更换陈旧的计算机设备所需的资金，并利用光学扫描、光学存储和数据传输等领域的新兴技术。将根据专家的判断，探索和利用存储、传输和以其他方式访问存档数据(例如光盘和局域网)的其他方法。

Funds are being furnished for the purpose of upgrading the computational instrumentation of the Inter.university Consortium for Political and Social Research. The goals are to improve the functional capacity of the consortium as a facility for research and instruction in the social sciences; to improve its capacity to provide services in a more effective fashion; and to prepare it to capitalize on advances in computer and information technology as such advances occur and are deemed applicable. Through this effort, inflationary and other pressures to increase membership fees will be eased, and consequently the number of colleges and universities able to subscribe to the consortium will continue to include the less well.to.do and more geographically remote along with the large, more centrally positioned institutions. The overall effect will be to maintain and perhaps even increase the number of social scientists with access to the consortium, and to open new windows of opportunity for exploitation of the consortium's vast data holdings .. thus serving to expand and sharpen our understanding of societal processes. The consortium is an organization with over 320 college and university affiliates. It acts as a repository for and distributor of computer.readable data amenable to social scientific analysis. Such data include, but are not limited to, data collected under NSF grants that are deemed useful for secondary analysis (the consortium is the preferred repository under the Division of Social and Economic Science's new archiving policy), and public use data files placed under consortium distributorship by federal statistical agencies. Data from a great many other sources also form part of the consortium's multifaceted archives. Through the work of the consortium, technical and economic obstacles to data use and data sharing are substantially reduced, the use of data is effectively democratized, the utility of costly data collections is increased, and greater research and instructional "payoff" is gained. Perhaps even greater benefits accrue from the value of the consortium as a resource for scientific verification and replication, and from its intrinsic character as a provider of quantitative information on social phenomena from more than one perspective. The recommended award will furnish the funds needed to replace obsolete computer equipment and capitalize upon emerging technologies in such areas as optical scanning, optical storage, and data transmission. Other approaches to storing, transmitting, and otherwise accessing archived data (CD ROM and LAN, for example) will be explored and utilized in accordance with the judgment of experts.