Electronic Data Documentation: Complementary SGML and Image Capture Approaches

大学间政治和社会研究联盟（ICPSR）为社会和行为科学研究和教学提供了世界上最大的定量数据库。 完整的、结构良好的文件对有效使用这些数据至关重要;今天，这些文件必须是电子的，必须可以在万维网上搜索。 该奖项将帮助ICPSR完成一项主要的研究和开发计划，旨在制作下一代社会和行为科学数据的电子文档。 ICPSR采用标准通用标记语言（SGML），正在开发一种用于生成结构化文档的新方法。 这个数据文档计划涉及来自世界各地数据档案馆的文档专家、美国统计机构的代表和SGML专家。 在合同有效期内，ICPSR将在多个地点对该方法进行测试，制定指导方针和参考手册，并将SGML方法与现有方法相结合。 这项工作的成果将是一个公开的文件类型定义，可能被世界各地的社会科学研究人员和统计机构广泛采用。 它将在物质上协助研究人员准备公开发布的数据，并将提高存档数据集的标准。 此外，该奖项还将帮助ICPSR制作结构化文件的电子文本。 由于ICPSR的大部分档案目前仅以纸质记录的形式记录，ICPSR正在投入大量资源编制电子文件，NSF正在为此增加投入，以加快文件从纸质到电子形式的转换。

The Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) archives the world's largest collection of quantitative data for social and behavioral science research and teaching. Complete, well-structured documentation is essential to effective use of these data; today, that documentation must be electronic and must be search-able on the World Wide Web. This award will assist ICPSR to complete a major program of research and development that is intended to produce the next generation of electronic documentation of social and behavioral science data. Employing the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML), ICPSR is developing a new methodology for producing structured documentation. This Data Documentation Initiative involves documentation experts from data archives around the world, representatives of U.S. statistical agencies, and experts in SGML. During the term of this award, ICPSR will beta-test this methodology at several locations, develop guidelines and reference manuals, and integrate the SGML methodology with existing methodologies. The product of this effort will be a publicly-available Document Type Definition that may be widely adopted by social science researchers and statistical agencies around the world. It will materially assist researchers in preparing their data for public release and will improve the standard of archived data sets. This award will, in addition, aid ICPSR in producing the electronic text that underlies structured documentation. As much of ICPSR's archive is currently documented solely by paper records, ICPSR is investing considerable resources in the preparation of electronic documentation, to which NSF is contributing an increment in order to accelerate the conversation of documentation from paper to electronic forms.