The Social Science Electronic Data Library: Serving the Needs of Data Librarians and Users

by Michael Carley &. Josefina J. Card * The last decade has witnessed enormous strides in two areas: first, the development of numerous social science data sets of high quality; and, second, the development of the computing hardware and software capability and infrastructure needed to locate and analyze these data sets for minimal cost and to communicate data findings in interesting and easy-tounderstand fashion. Hand in hand with these advances in data development have come technological advances which allow social science research and teaching laboratories, with the hardware and software needed to analyze the best data in a given field, to be set up with ease by an academic department or even by an individual professor. Additionally, sophisticated data analysis software packages formerly available only for mainframe computers have become available for microcomputers at a much reduced cost. Taken together, these developments make it possible for academic departments, research institutes, and government offices of all sizes and levels of financial resources to access and analyze exemplary data sets for research, teaching, and programand policy-development purposes.