DDI History
In 1995, Richard Rockwell, then the Executive Director of ICPSR, constituted a Committee to develop a metadata specification to replace the obsolete OSIRIS standard.
The first meeting was held in conjunction with the annual
meeting of the International Association of Social Science
Information Service and Technology (IASSIST) in Quebec City,
Quebec, in May of 1995. Members developed a draft list of
codebook elements to appear in the DTD.
The committee again met the following October at the ICPSR
Meeting of Official Representatives to refine the elements
further and in April 1996 to
examine a sample DTD prepared by John Brandt and his
colleagues at the University of Michigan Library. The
committee also met in October 1997 in Washington, DC; at that meeting
subcommittees were formed to conduct a review of the elements of the
DTD and to address the issue of handling aggregate data in the DTD.
In preparation for betatesting, another meeting of the committee was
held May 17, 1998, in New Haven, CT, in conjunction with the meeting
of IASSIST/CSS. A proposed list of changes to the codebook DTD was
reviewed, and a timeline for upcoming activities was discussed. The
committee's proposed revisions to the DTD were made over the summer
and fall of 1998 by Jerry McDonough, a DTD developer at the University
of California-Berkeley library.
The beta-test of the DDI DTD began in March 1999 and continued
until August 3. Interim reports from the testers were provided in May and
discussed at a brief meeting of the committee held in Toronto that month,
at the time of the IASSIST conference. A working group was formed to resolve
remaining technical issues.
At the conclusion of the beta-test, a list of changes suggested by the
testers was compiled and subsequently reviewed at a meeting of the committee
held in October 1999 during the ICPSR Meeting of Official Representatives.
Version 1 of the DTD, published March 24, 2000, incorporates these changes.
A June 2000 meeting of the Committee was held in conjunction with the
IASSIST meeting at Northwestern University. Organizational issues with
respect to leadership of the DDI effort and funding strategies were discussed,
along with several other technical issues.
On February 23, 2001, four independent evaluators met with the DDI
Working Group
in Ann Arbor to gather information on and assess the DDI project. In their
subsequent reports, the evaluators expressed enthusiasm for the effort and
offered encouragement and suggestions for next steps.
The day after the evaluators' meeting, the DDI Committee itself met
to discuss the content of the next proposal and progress made toward a
specification describing aggregate and tabular data. The latter
activity was discussed in detail at a small Working Group meeting in
April 2001 in Voorburg, the Netherlands. Agreement was reached during
that meeting on a draft aggregate data model, to be reviewed by the
Committee and voted on in June 2001. The model was presented at a
meeting of the Working Group held in Amsterdam in May 2001 in
connection with the IASSIST/IFDO Meeting. Also discussed were plans for
the next proposal submission, mechanisms for revising the DTD, and
reconceptualizing the DDI along the lines of an object-oriented model.
At the June 29, 2001,
meeting in Washington, DC, Committee members agreed to begin testing the new Version
1.02 of the DTD, which incorporates an extension describing
aggregate/tabular data. At the meeting that was held on January 14 and 15, 2002, again in Washington, DC, members
discussed possible funding mechanisms for the DDI project, aggregate
and hierarchical data extensions, geography in the DTD, ISO
harmonization, weights, and XML schemas.
In June 2002, the DDI Committee met in Storrs, CT, in conjunction with the IASSIST meeting. The main focus of this meeting was a draft charter, written by Richard Rockwell, to create a DDI Alliance -- new membership structure and funding base that would provide support so that the initiative could continue. The charter document provides for an Expert Committee with representation from the DDI Alliance membership, with each member of the Committee having a vote and thus a say in the future of the DDI. The Committee also approved adding TEI tags for formatting to the DDI specification and implementing a more logical versioning system for the DDI.
The Committee met again in October 2002, with the main topic of discusion the new DDI Alliance structure. Suggestions for modifying the charter were discussed, and members also focused on the transition from the existing Committee structure to the Alliance and the timing of future meetings of the Steering and Expert Committees.
At its February 7, 2003, meeting in Washington--the final meeting of the original DDI Committee--the group approved numerous changes to the DTD, including the aggregate/tabular extension and key elements describing geography. The Alliance Steering Committee met for the first time the following day.
An Open Meeting of the DDI Alliance was held in conjunction with IASSIST in Ottawa on May 28, 2003. Meeting participants discussed the new Alliance structure and elements of a Strategic Plan for the next three years of the Alliance.
Minutes of recent meetings and information on other DDI activities
can be viewed at
http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/DDI/org/minutes/index.html.
Original DDI Committee Members
- Bjorn Henrichsen, Chair, Norwegian Social Science Data Services
- Micah Altman, Harvard University
- Atle Alvheim, Norwegian Social Science Data Services
- Grant Blank, American University
- Ernie Boyko, Statistics Canada
- Bill Bradley, Health Canada
- Cavan Capps, Bureau of the Census
- Bill Connett, University of Michigan
- Cathryn Dippo, Bureau of Labor Statistics
- Pat Doyle, Bureau of the Census
- Dan Gillman, Bureau of Labor Statistics
- Peter Granda, ICPSR
- Ann Green, Yale University
- Peter Joftis, ICPSR
- Ken Miller, ESRC Data Archive
- Tom Piazza, University of California, Berkeley
- Karsten Boye Rasmussen, University of Southern Denmark
- Richard Rockwell, The Roper Center
- Jostein Ryssevik, Norwegian Social Science Data Services
- Merrill Shanks, University of California, Berkeley
- Peter Solenberger, University of Michigan
- Wendy Thomas, University of Minnesota
- Rolf Uher, Zentralarchiv für Empirische Sozialforschung
- Mary Vardigan, ICPSR
DDI Alliance
