Institute of Sociology of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic

The aim of the project is to implement the international stardard for data documentation called Data Documentation Initiative (DDI), to apply NESSTAR tecnology in Sociological Data Archive (SDA) of the Institute of Sociology, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic and to extend the integration of the Czech archive into international networks, mainly into the European network CESSDA.

The implementation of the DDI standard and the NESSTAR technology:

• will improve the present technologies of digital data archiving at SDA, especially it will guarantee long-term compatibility of the data and documentation format in accordance with modern software development and also it will develop the secure data uploading;
• will bring the international compatibility to Czech data services and will enable their convenient integration into the international data exchange systems, it will simplify and improve the access to SDA data;
• will promote the standard of the data documentation and enable the analysis of the archived data through the internet, it will connect the data catalogue and the data services of SDA with the international archives and facilitate the direct access to the international data;
• will help to keep step with main trends of the modern development and open the road to application of the other new technologies based on DDI standard, it will also enable the participation of the Czech archive in the international development projects.

The international standard of data documentations DDI is the organised structure of the metadata (datat documentation) in XML format. Among the main advantages of this standard are the resistance to software format development, which is essential for effective long-term archiving, the new opportunities for processing and linking together of all stored information, the international compatibility and the compatibility with the modern technologies of data administrations, management and analysis in social sciences.

NESSTAR (Networked Social Science Tools and Resources) allows an on-line control of the access to the data provided to the different types of users; it enables searching in the data sets and documentation and on-line analysis of the data, including graphical outputs; besides, it combines more sources of information and provides the users with the possibility to upload the primary data files. The system connects several data libraries and enables the linking of the different data archive services.