Reminder--forum tomorrow featuring Simon Musgrave

[Tom Hyry <thomas.hyry@YALE.EDU>]

The Yale University Library's Standing Committee on Professional Awareness
(SCOPA) and Yale ITS Academic Media & Technology are happy to present a
talk by Simon Musgrave, Director of the NESSTAR Project, on May 3 at 2 p.m.
in the Sterling Memorial Library Lecture Hall. Musgrave will speak to
interested librarians, faculty, and students about the NESSTAR  project,
its functionality, and its potential to change how social science data is
used in teaching, research, and publishing.  

The NESSTAR (Networked Social Science Tools and Resources) software
development builds on state-of-the-art technology like Java, XML, http,
etc. NESSTAR is funded by DGXIII of the European Commission. The NESSTAR
home page may be found at http://www.nesstar.org/

One of the first "social science dream machines," NESSTAR is a Virtual Data
Library, where large amounts of statistical data and their related
descriptive metadata are made easily available through the Web for broad
and diverse groups of users. The NESSTAR project aims to increase the use
of data by developing a set of generic tools that make it easier to:

1. locate multiple data sources across organisational and national boundaries
2. browse detailed information about data, especially descriptive and
contextual information
3. tabulate and visualise data quickly and easily for both naïve and
experienced users
4. disseminate data and documentation, in whole or part, in forms suitable
for immediate use

Join us on May 3 at 2 p.m. in the Sterling Memorial Library Lecture Hall to
hear Simon Musgrave on the future of data on the Web.  Light refreshments
will be served prior to the forum.

On behalf of SCOPA,

Tom Hyry