Bauder - The reference guide to data sources

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Julia Bauder is the social studies and data services librarian at the Grinnell College Libraries in Grinnell, Iowa. Bauder holds a masters degree from the School of Library and Information Science at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. Before becoming a librarian, she spent several years as a freelance writer and editor of reference books.

2014 by the American Library Association

Extensive effort has gone into ensuring the reliability of the information in this book; however, the publisher makes no warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein.

ISBNs: 978-0-8389-1227-0 (paper); 978-0-8389-1962-0 (PDF); 978-0-8389-1963-7 (ePub); 978-0-8389-1964-4 (Kindle). For more information on digital formats, visit the ALA Store at alastore.ala.org and select eEditions.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bauder, Julia.

The reference guide to data sources / Julia Bauder.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and .

ISBN 978-0-8389-1227-0 (alk. paper)

1. StatisticsComputer network resourcesHandbooks, manuals, etc. 2. Social sciencesStatisticsHandbooks, manuals, etc. 3. Internet researchHandbooks, manuals, etc. 4. Electronic reference sourcesHandbooks, manuals, etc. 5. Internet searchingHandbooks, manuals, etc. 6. World Wide WebSubject accessHandbooks, manuals, etc. I. Title. II. Title: Guide to data sources.

HA33.5.B38 2014

025.06dc23 2014006175

Cover design by Alejandra Diaz. Image bloomva/Shutterstock, Inc.

Contents

Appendixes

T hank you to Anne ODwyer for introducing me to quantitative research in the social sciences, and to all of the faculty at Simons Rock College who worked so hard to help me become a better writer. I would not have been able to write this book without their patient teaching.

Thank you to Alana Joli Abbott for setting me up with my first freelance writing jobs, which started me on the career trajectory that led to this book.

Thank you to all of the data librarians who graciously welcomed me into the profession. This list includes Chuck Humphrey and Jim Jacobs, whose ICPSR class, Providing Social Science Data Services: Strategies for Design and Operation, was an excellent introduction to the field, and my colleagues in the International Association for Social Science Information Services and Technology and the ACRL Numeric and Geospatial Data Services in Academic Libraries Interest Group.

Thank you to the countless people over the years who have said to me, Hey, have you seen this great data set? I first became aware of many of the sources listed in this book because an enthusiastic colleague shared them with me, and I appreciate both the tips and the enthusiasm.

Thank you to Grinnell College for generously funding research leaves for junior faculty, including me, and to all of my colleagues in the Grinnell College Libraries who picked up the slack for me while I was off writing. I would never have had the time to write this book without that support.

Thank you to the wonderful editorial team at ALA Editions. They provided excellent suggestions that improved this book immensely.

And, finally, thank you to all of my friends and family who, for almost a year, put up with me saying, I cant; I have to write!

Q uestions about statisticsWhat is the population of London? How many people are diagnosed with cancer annually?have long been a staple at library reference desks. Most librarians are familiar with the print ready-reference sources that were traditionally kept within reach to answer themthe Statistical Abstract of the United States, The World Almanac and Book of Facts, and the CIA World Factbook, to name just a fewand, now, with the online equivalents of these publications. Not too many years ago, however, data reference was a specialized library service available primarily at research libraries. Few librarians outside of those institutions would ever encounter a question like I need thirty years of time-series data on the production of beef in Texas at the county level, and even fewer librarians would have been comfortable with the intricacies of working with data on reel-to-reel tapes and punchcards.

Two changesthe rise of the Internet, which has made disseminating data much less complicated, and the spread of statistical software packages into the undergraduate curriculumhave blurred the line between statistics reference and data reference. As more data and more user-friendly tools to work with data have become available, interest in finding and using quantitative data has grown. Yet data-related reference questions are often some of the most daunting questions for general reference librarians. My hope is that this guide makes those questions a little less daunting.

For Whom Is This Guide Intended?

Although I hope that all reference librarians find this guide helpful, its primary audience is librarians at public libraries, high school libraries, and the majority of academic libraries that do not employ staff dedicated to data reference. Librarians working with undergraduates at large research institutions may also find that the guide allows them to answer some basic data reference questions without having to refer students to a dedicated data services librarian.

Because the intended audience is primarily librarians at institutions that have not made a major financial commitment to data services, this guide focuses on freely available, online sources for data. In many subject areas, much of the most frequently used data can be found online for free if one knows where to look. On the occasions when a commonly requested type of data is not freely available from any online source, subscription databases or print series containing the data may be mentioned. Librarians whose institutions subscribe to many statistical databases may find Lynda M. Kellams guide Numeric Data Services and Sources for the General Reference Librarian (Chandos, 2011), which focuses more on subscription databases for data reference, to be helpful for their situation.

This guide focuses on data available through English-language interfaces, although it occasionally makes reference to data available in foreign-language interfaces. It does not include certain specialized scientific data sources, such as gene sequence databases or databases of chemical structures; nor does it include qualitative data sources. Instead, the focus is on quantitative social science data, broadly definedthat is, data that is primarily useful in the context of social science disciplines such as economics and sociology, as well as scientific data that frequently is or can be deployed in the context of government policy making, such as data on public health, climate change, or natural disasters.

In the following thematic , the discussion is divided into three categories: major sources for U.S. data, major sources for international data, and minor sources. The sites listed as major sources are large databases, typically from the major international or federal government agencies with responsibility for a given area; they are the most likely resources for answering most common reference questions in their areas.

Minor sources were selectively chosen from the dozens of smaller data sources in each area because they fill a gap in the data that is available from the major sources or because they present a selection of data from the major sources in a more user-friendly interface.