Using Gopher to Search the ICPSR Database
              Political and Social Science Data at Your Fingertips
 
                   (adapted from an article by Bliss Siman)
 
The CUNY Data Library, an outgrowth of the University's membership in
the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research
(ICPSR), contains or has access to a wide variety of machine-readable
social science data files.  The data library, which I have coordinated
at the Baruch College Library, currently acquires not only ICPSR data
files, but data from the Roper Center, the Census Bureau and other
governmental agencies, various private polling or survey
organizations, and data archives throughout the world.  The data files
are available free of charge to all CUNY students and faculty.  They
are stored on magnetic tape at the University Computer Center
(CUNY/UCC) for easy access from any CUNY campus.
 
Many CUNY faculty and students are using these data files for
research, dissertations, course assignments, and classroom projects.
Many others consult the data library's collection of codebooks and
data documentation to plan original data collections of their own.  Up
to now, though, accessing the data was often easier than finding out
what was in the Data Library.  Although several publications were
distributed, including a Data Directory and an occasional newsletter,
these publications were out-of-date before their distribution because
new data arrives all the time.  A phone call to my office was the only
sure way to find out if data existed on a particular topic, or if the
University owned a specific dataset.  Clearly this system was less
than ideal.  Beginning with this semester, that is history.
 
The ICPSR Guide, a catalog of data files in the collection, is
available in machine-readable format using SPIRES, a database
management system running on CUNYVM.  Through a joint project of the
CUNY Data Library and CUNY/UCC, the ICPSR SPIRES database has been
enhanced to provide the following additional information:
 
-- whether the data files are available at CUNY;
-- full tape information for those files available at CUNY;
-- non-ICPSR files that are part of the CUNY Data Library.
 
 
How to Use the ICPSR Database via Gopher
________________________________________
 
 
After accessing the ICPSR database via gopher, you can search based on
the following keywords:
 
   TITLEW          Title of study (enter 1 or more words)
   SUBWORD         Subject of the study (enter 1 or more words)
   PINAME          Primary author or investigator
   AVAILABLE       Study available at CUNY (Yes or No)
   COMPOUND        Index(s) and Value(s) - e.g.:
                       SUBWORD ADOLESCENCE AND AVAILABLE YES
 
 
A request to search by SUBWORD for "adolescence" and by AVAILABILITY
AT CUNY would yield studies that met both those criteria, thereby
limiting the search at the outset.
 
For many studies, the lack of a hardcopy codebook for the data will
not be a hindrance since the tape that contains the study will include
a machine-readable codebook that can be consulted or printed.  This
tape file is listed in the SPIRES database, along with the other files
on the tape, making that resource readily apparent to you.
 
 
How to Obtain Data Not Currently Available at CUNY
__________________________________________________
 
Since ICPSR has literally thousands of files, they are not all at
CUNY.  If your search yields an ICPSR dataset of interest not owned by
CUNY, a simple e-mail message, phone call or note from a CUNY faculty
member to the CUNY Data Library (see below) will create an order for
the data.  Those who do not find any data of interest in the database
should contact the CUNY Data Library for consultations on a data
search.
 
 
Further Information
___________________
 
Complete documentation is available at the CUNY/UCC Help Desk and at
the CUNY Data Library, 360 Park Avenue South, Room 1227.  Contact the
CUNY Data Library by telephone: (212) 447-3373; or via e-mail:
ROPBB@CUNYVM or CDAXU@CUNYVM.  If you have difficulty using SPIRES to
access the database, contact the CUNY/UCC Help Desk at (212) 903-3681
or via e-mail: CTRCU@CUNYVM.
 
You may save the information to your disk by pressing PF5; a filename
and filetype will be created from the data's record number.  Or you
may Xedit the file (PF11) and type FILE filename filetype <filemode>.
.