The UKDA Data Exchange Tools (DExT) in collaboration with the Open Data Foundation has just released a new version of a Java package for reading SPSS data files and export metadata in DDI 2.0 and DDI 3.0 CR 2 formats. The library allows allows for the export of the data in varous ASCII formats. The package can be retrieved at:
http://forge.opendatafoundation.org/gf/project/ukda_dext/frs/?action=FrsReleaseBrowse&frs_package_id=1
It is a sub-component of a DExT application that preservation and dissemination of data and metadata in standard formats.

The first issue of the DDI newsletter called DDI Directions is now available for download as a PDF file. The quarterly newsletter provides information and updates on DDI activities throughout the year, and suggestions for content can be sent to Mary Vardigan, DDI Alliance Director, at vardigan@umich.edu.
DDI Directions, December 2007/Winter 2008

The 2007 Annual Meeting of the Open Data Foundation will take place at the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) office in Washington, DC on Wednesday December 19th from 9am-5pm. We would like to thank Dr. Julia Lane for her assistance in providing once more the facility to host our annual get-together.

An outline of the agenda is enclosed below, and a more detailed version will be made available prior to the event. Please let us know if you expect to attend in person or are interested to participate via conference call. For further information, see: http://www.opendatafoundation.org/events/odaf_annual_meetings_2007.php

Draft Agenda for the ODaF Annual Meeting 2007
___________________________________

I. Business Report
A. Personnel Changes
B. Financial Report
II. Report on Ongoing Projects
III. Status of Resolutions from 2006
IV. Marketing Activities
A. Website
B. Position Papers
C. Newletters and Blog
D. Conferences
V. Face-to-Face Meetings
A. Report on St. Helena Meeting
B. Discussion of Next Meeting
VI. New Projects and Ideas
VII. Resolutions

A strategic ODaF meeting was held on September 13-15, 2007 at Director Bob Glushko’s St. Helena Conference Center (California, USA). The intent of the meeting was to discuss current work and brain-storm ideas for future projects.

Due to limited space, only Directors, Advisors, and Managers were invited to the meeting, along with a few presenters from outside the organization. The event was attended by participants from Adobe, the Dutch Data Archive (DANS), the Canada Research Data Centre (RDC), the National Cancer Institute (NCI), Swivel, the UK Data Archive (UKDA), along with directors, advisors and managers of the Open Data Foundation.

The meeting agenda and report can be downloaded below. Note that the minutes do not capture all of the discussions which took place, but attempt to describe the course of the meeting and to list ideas and action items for follow-up. Do not hesitate to contact us should you have any questions on specific topics.

• ODaF St-Helena 2007 Meeting Agenda
• ODaF St-Helena 2007 Meeting Report

ODaF wishes to express its thanks to Director Bob Glushko, who - in addition to giving us his insight as a director - made the meeting possible by giving us the use of his conference center, providing food and drink, and in all ways acting as a gracious host. Everyone was suitably impressed with the facilities and surroundings, which provided an excellent working atmosphere.

The Canada Research Data Centre Network, the Danish Data Archive, the DDI Alliance, GESIS-ZUMA, the National Opinion Research Center, the Open Data Foundation, and the United Kingdom Data Archive have agree to establish a joint program for the development of a foundation framework and a utility toolkit to support the implementation of DDI tools. The DDI Foundation Tools Program consists in a collection of coordinated projects whose products will be designed to inter-operate and implemented in accordance with standard guidelines and based on core components to be developed.

This memorandum of understanding has been established for an initial period of 2 years and is open to other organization interested in joining. The members are expected to participate in the global efforts through in cash or in kind contributions and technical support. The Open Data Foundation’s role will focus on the coordination of efforts and providing the ICT infrastructure to host the web site and the development projects.

We are pleased to announce that the Open Data Foundation is now an official member of the DDI Alliance. While we were already very active in the DDI area, this formalizes our relationship with the community.

The Alliance for the Data Documentation Initiative is an international coalition of diverse organizations that share a commitment to meeting the worldwide requirement of a publicly available standard for documenting social science data. The Alliance’s purposes are to (a) oversee the continued development of the DDI standard, including revisions, corrections, and new releases; (b) promote the adoption of the DDI social science metadata standard by data producers, data archives, data users, and software suppliers; (c) offer entry-level and advanced training in the uses of the standard for all groups of potential adopters; (d) insofar as possible, ensure compatibility of the DDI standard with emerging metadata standards in other fields; and (e) resolve the varying and sometimes conflicting interests of the diverse community that is developing and using the DDI standard.

We are pleased to announce that the UK Data Archive (UKDA) and the Open Data Foundation (ODaF) have agreed to initiate a collaborative project for the development of data archiving and conversion tools. Supported by the UKDA Data Exchange Tools (DExT) initiative, the project aims at the development of open source utilities for the conversion of quantitative data into a standard archiving format and export to common statistical packages or database systems. This initial phase is a proof of concept that will focus on using SPSS as an input format and support export to SPSS, STATA, SAS and ASCII. The archiving format will be based on a combination of fixed ASCII data and DDI metadata. Developments are expected to begin in June with product delivery scheduled for end of November 2007. This work will lay the foundation for more advanced tools that can support additional input and output formats and provide enhanced functionalities.

For further information, contact info@opendatafoundation.org
The DExT project, running at the UK Data Archive, University of Essex is funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) as part of its Repositories and Preservation programme.
http://www.data-archive.ac.uk/dext

We are pleased to announce that the Open Data Foundation is a proud sponsor of this year’s IAssist conference that will be held in Montreal, Canada from May 14th to 18th.

The program schedule has recently been released and registration is now open. We hope to see you there.

See http://www.edrs.mcgill.ca/IASSIST2007/ for further information.

The 3rd International Conference on e-Social Science will be held at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, October 7-9, 2007

The aim of this NSF-sponsored conference on e-Social Science is to bring together international representatives of the social science and cyberinfrastructure research communities in order to create better mutual awareness, harmonize understanding, and instigate coordinated activities to accelerate research, development, and deployment of cyberinfrastructure to support the social science research community.

See http://ess.si.umich.edu for information.

The final release of Orbeon Forms 3.5 is now available.

Orbeon Forms is an open source forms solution that handles the complexity of forms typical of the enterprise or government. It is delivered to standard web browsers thanks to XForms and Ajax technology, with no need for client-side software or plugins.

Orbeon Forms allows you to build fully interactive forms with features that include as-you-type validation, optional and repeated sections, always up-to-date error summaries, PDF output, full internationalization, and controls like auto-completion, tabs, dialogs, trees and menus.

Click here to see the full announcement or visit
http://www.orbeon.com