UpDate - Vol. 15, No. 8, Page TT-1
October 19, 1995
TechTalk
Setting our 'sites' on service

'I need help processing data for my grant proposal. Where do I go?'

     Advances in information technology have allowed researchers to
obtain more data than ever before. When researchers need assistance
processing that information, they often turn to the consulting staff
of the Research Data Management Services (RDMS) Data Center.
     "We provide the campus community with four essential services,"
Dick Sacher, user services, said. "We acquire data and digital map
layers that are essential to researchers, particularly in the social,
physical and planning sciences. We provide consulting assistance on
the efficient use of UNIX-based and microcomputer-based software for
statistics, mathematics, graphics and Geographic Information Systems
(GIS). Third, we offer some assistance with data analysis, both with
data the faculty member brings to us or that we have at the Data
Center or on the central UNIX system. Finally, we help researchers
find and access machine-readable data from a variety of sources."
     "Data accessibility is really the hitch," Stacie Beck, economics,
said. RDMS is constantly acquiring new data sets, including ones from
government agencies and private data archives, Sacher said. Even
though RDMS's services are heavily used by University researchers,
some of the data sets, such as the General Social Survey and American
National Election Studies, also are used by classes in sociology and
political science, he said.
     Beck needed assistance processing data she had collected from a
variety of sources as she pursued her research in commodity markets.
"I needed software that would allow me to manipulate my data using
equations closer to the theory and hypotheses I was using," Beck said.
"No such software existed in the market. Larry Hotchkiss, an RDMS
consultant, helped me develop a program that would do the maximum
likelihood analysis I needed."
     Paul Solano and Bob Wilson, urban affairs and public policy,
received help at an earlier stage of a research project. "We had vast
amounts of data that we needed to manipulate quickly as we developed a
grant proposal," Solano said. "The assistance we received from the
RDMS staff shortened the time needed to manipulate the data by at
least six months. That timeframe was critical to complete the research
required for our grant." The college received a grant for $1.3 million
from the federal and state governments to analyze treatment programs
for drug and alcohol abuse.
     David Kaplan, educational studies, said RDMS staff helped him and
one of his graduate students, Rani George, access and use data from
the Longitudinal Study of American Youth. "Now that large scale
surveys are available on CD-ROM and are easy to use, the RDMS
represents a wonderful resource for faculty and students alike,"
Kaplan said.
     Sandy Schenck, Delaware Geological Survey (DGS), said that RDMS
had helped him put some of DGS's data on CDs to facilitate sharing
information. "But, the real breakthrough has been in developing World
Wide Web and GIS interfaces to our data," Schenck said.
     Two of DGS's databases-state elevation data and boundary data-are
now on line. "At first, I dreaded moving my data from the IBM
mainframe," Schenck explained. "But, I have found that the data is
more directly accessible to people. I used to have requests for
information that would take a lot of my time. Now, I either point
people to our Web page or use the fax board in my desktop computer to
send them information directly."
     Schenck said RDMS has the potential for expanding the use of GIS
software on campus. "Jian Chen, an RDMS consultant, and I have talked
about making more data layers available about the state-for example,
map overlays of the roads, residential patterns and water systems."
     According to Sacher, GIS software has been widely used for urban
planning, resource management, ecological and geological studies and
the analysis and display of demographic and economic information.
"Until now, GIS software has been used by only a few University
departments," he said. But, with the new campus-wide site license for
ARC/INFO and ArcView, many more researchers have the opportunity to
work with these systems. Sacher said that Chen will be the RDMS staff
member responsible for acquiring digital maps for general use,
planning campus-wide GIS activities, working with DGS and others to
assemble databases of geophysical data and providing demonstrations of
GIS packages.
     Sacher said RDMS complements the services provided by the
Library's Government Documents section and its Digital Mapping
Station. The Library's workstation allows one to view or print a
number of thematic maps for various geographic regions of the U.S.
"People can select from a fixed set of maps at the Library station
based on Tiger/Line boundaries and 1990 U.S. Census STF1A and STF3A
summary data," Sacher said. "But they would come to RDMS when they
needed assistance with the analysis or with developing new data
layers." Similarly, the Government Documents section has a rich
collection of public data on CD-ROM. The librarians' expertise helps
researchers make basic data queries. When more elaborate data
extraction or analysis is required, researchers may borrow CDs and
consult with RDMS staff or use the RDMS Data Center's computing
facilities.
     "Another way we know that RDMS helps people is in data
conversion. Whether it's helping to convert data from a format used by
one statistical or GIS package to that used by another or helping a
researcher develop a data-access interface, we spend a lot of time
working with researchers in this area," he said.
     "My experience has been," Solano said, "that the consultants at
RDMS give me more than a quick fix to research problems. I get
thorough solutions with logical explanations of why one option was
chosen over another, so I can modify the programs and data analysis
myself."



For further data....

     For more information about RDMS, point your Web browser at
          http://www.rdms.udel.edu

     To see the applications developed by the Delaware Geological
Survey, point your Web browser at
          http://www.udel.edu/dgs/dgs.html

     For more information about the Library's Digital Mapping Station,
point your Web browser at
          http://www.lib.udel.edu/ud/gis/