Searchable Digital Notebooks for Research

There is still limited space available for the workshop this week on searchable digital notebooks. Learn how to create and maintain a searchable digital notebook that can be used for taking notes on a particular subject or for project documentation and reference. The workshop will be held on Friday, November 2nd from 12:50 p.m. to 1:40 p.m. in Woodruff Library Room 312. To sign up, contact Michael Page at michael.page@emory.edu or 404.727.2348.

New EUGene release

The very popular EUGene (Expected Utility Data Generation and Management Program) software has just been updated and is freely available for download. A list of changes and additions to the program is available at http://www.eugenesoftware.org/changes.asp. A list of variables currently available via EUGene is at http://www.eugenesoftware.org/variables.asp. More information and links to download the software are available at the EUGene homepage.

Natural Earth Goes Green

At the North American Cartographic Information Society (NACIS) meeting held in St. Louis, MO this week Tom Patterson of the U.S. National Park Service unveiled the latest release of Natural Earth. This raster data set portrays the world environment as it would be with limited human impact. There are several versions including bathymetry. Natural Earth II makes an excellent basemap for historical, environmental and other applications. This data set is in the public domain.

Understanding Geographic Information Systems

There is still limited space available for the workshop this week on geographic information systems. A Geographic Information System (GIS) is a collection of computer hardware, software, and geographic data for capturing, managing, analyzing, and displaying all forms of geographically referenced information. Learn more about this technology and how it can be used for research and projects in the business, humanities, and the health, natural, or social sciences. To sign up, contact Michael Page at michael.page@emory.edu.

The workshop will be held at Woodruff Library Room 310, on Thursday October 18, 2007 from 4:00-4:50 p.m.

Stata Introduction Classes In October

Jesse Hamner (Social Sciences Computing Center) and Rob O’Reilly (Electronic Data Center) will provide 2 introductory classes for Stata later in the month. The first class will be on Tuesday, October 16 from 4:00PM-6:00PM and will focus on basic data management. The second class will be on Tuesday, October 23 from 4:00PM-6:00PM and will touch upon intermediate data management and basic data analysis. Both classes will be in Tarbutton Hall in 120A. Attendance is limited to 16 participants. Please contact Jesse (jhamner@emory.edu) if you would like to attend.

More Dataset Additions and Updates at the Roper Center

Roper Center Archives Update, August 2007

The Roper Center has just added more studies into its archive of survey data sets. Highlights of this latest round of additions include the following:

• 3 new Pew Research Center Polls conducted from September, 2006 to January, 2007 including oversamples of specific Congressional Districts

See the link above to get a .pdf with the full list of additions and updates to datasets in Roper’s extensive holdings. You can view current and past announcements of updates to Roper’s archives at the following URL:

http://www.ropercenter.uconn.edu/data_access/data/past_data_announcements.html

And, be sure to check out Roper’s Survey Spotlights to see other noteworthy datasets in Roper’s collections.

Stata -tabout- Command

While SPSS will let users export tables into formats such as Word documents and Excel spreadsheets, Stata does not have such functionality. With the -tabout- extension, however, you can now export Stata tables of frequencies and percentages into publication-quality formats. You can read more about -tabout- at this location within EconPapers. To install -tabout-, type -findit tabout- in Stata’s command window and follow the links.

Yes, even *more* ICPSR updates and additions

The ICPSR’s archive of data continues to grow – see

http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/ICPSR/org/announce.html#new2007-10-08

for the latest additions and updates. Highlights include the addition of data from the National Survey of America’s Families series, the addition of Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study (CILS), 1992-1995, and an updated version of the cumulative American National Election Studies file to include data from 2004.

As always, you can view ICPSR studies that were added or updated during the past 90 days at http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/ICPSR/access/recent.html.

And, while it’s not a new study, no discussion of the ICPSR’s archive is complete without a mention of this particular data collection.

Create Your Own Projection

Tom Patterson from the U.S. National Park Service demonstrated Flex Projector, a world map projection utility, during Practical Cartography Day at the annual meeting of the North American Cartographic Information Society (NACIS) held this year in St. Louis, Missouri. For mapmakers this utility is useful in creating custom projection files that can be used with other programs and for educators it is an excellent way to show the various distortions of world projections. This freeware application was developed by Bernhard Jenny of the Institute of Cartography, ETH Zurich with assistance from Tom Patterson. The application runs on Mac, Windows, or Linux. Tom warns the application is currently in the alpha stage of development but I am certain they welcome comments and suggestions. See the Flex Projector website to download the application or get more information.