The Role of the Web in the Provision of National Data and Information Services: the MIDAS Experience

MIDAS is a JISC designated national data centre for the UK higher education community providing on-line access and support for a range of large and complex datasets, such as censuses, surveys, time series databanks, bibliographic and full text databases. In this context, MIDAS is part of the developing JISC funded National Distributed Electronic Resource which is seeking to promote and extend access to electronic information and services to the entire UK higher education community. The expectations of users have changed considerably and we have had to rethink how we deliver data and information to the researcher's desktop. It is not enough to promote awareness of the data resources and their potential applications in teaching and research. We also have to convince the users that their time is being used efficiently, that they can easily identify the data that they want, extract it and where appropriate put it into a suitable format for secondary analysis. For us this means creating appropriate interfaces for the data-simple enough for a once-off selection and versatile enough for more sophisticated use. This paper addresses the influence of the Web and the expectations of its users on the services provided by MIDAS. It shall describe some the new interfaces to data and information which will be of particular interest in both research and teaching. designated national data centre for the UK higher education community providing on-line access and support for a range of data and information resources. Along with the other JISC funded data centres (BIDS and EDINA), data services and projects, MIDAS is part of the developing Distributed National Electronic Resource (DNER) which is seeking to promote and extend access to electronic information and services to the entire UK higher education community The data and information resources available through MIDAS include on-line access to the UK Census of Population; government and other continuous surveys; national and international time series databanks; digital map data; satellite images; chemical information systems; bibliographic data resources and electronic journals. A key component of the service is the provision of a range of specialist support services, such as documentation, training and research support, relating to the data and information resources available on MIDAS. Many of the services are run in collaboration with other organisations, such as The Data Archive at the University of Essex. MIDAS also provides access to a range of software packages and the large scale computing resources (i.e. …