This document provides an overview of social science data and digital resources available through the British Library. It summarizes the British Library's datasets strategy, key resources like the Economic and Social Data Service (ESDS) and census data, spatial data sources, open data initiatives, the UK Web Archive, and tools for working with data. The goal is to help researchers discover, access, reuse, reference, and track the impact of datasets.

1. Social Science Data and Digital
Resources
February 2012
John Kaye – Lead Curator Digital Social Science
http://www.slideshare.net/johnkayebl

2. Overview
• British Library Datasets Strategy
• ESDS
• Census Resources
• Spatial Data
• Open Data
• UK Web Archive
• Other Data and Resources
• Tools, Software and Visualisation
• Identifying, Citing and Sharing Data
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3. What is a dataset?
 Seismic measurements taken by a
geologist.
 Genetic data collected by a medical
researcher.
 A survey of public opinions collected
by a sociologist.
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4. The Foundation for Research
 Data is a crucial component of the scholarly record.
 Re-acquisition may be impossible
 Datasets are essential to the British Library’s mission
to advance the World’s knowledge.
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5. The British Library Datasets Strategy
We envision a future where researchers can:
 Discover, access, reuse, and reference
datasets.
 Track the impact of the data that they
generate and receive appropriate credit.
Our approach is to:
 Provide a focus for the community to
establish needs, requirements and
agreement.
 Explore novel technology and creative
solutions.
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6. Datasets in Explore The British Library
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7. Explore The British Library (Portals)
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8. Explore The British Library (Portals)
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9. Economic and Social Data Service - (ESDS) www.esds.ac.uk
Data search and download
Research method guides
Thematic guides
Online analysis
Secure Data Service http://securedata.data-archive.ac.uk/
 UK Data Service
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10. Economic and Social Data Service - (ESDS) www.esds.ac.uk
ESDS Government
 large-scale government surveys, such as the Labour Force Survey and
the General Household Survey
 ESDS International
 multi-nation databanks, such as World Bank's World Development
Indicators, and survey data including Eurobarometer
 ESDS Longitudinal
 major UK surveys following individuals over time, such as the British
Household Panel Survey
 ESDS Qualidata
 a range of multimedia qualitative data sources
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11. 2011 Census
Data available on www.ons.gov.uk -
latest release is output area key statistics
Academic releases will be made
available via Census Dissemination Unit
via their InFuse tool
http://cdu.mimas.ac.uk/
 Lots of information and support at
http://census.ac.uk/
Experian Geodemographic Data
http://cdu.mimas.ac.uk/experian/index.htm
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12. Previous Censuses
Data available for 1981-2011 on http://www.nomisweb.co.uk/
Academic data release from 1971 to 2001 on casweb (also
contains geographic boundary data) http://casweb.mimas.ac.uk/
 Histpop – The Online Historical Reports Collection (OHPR)
provides online access to population reports for Britain and
Ireland from 1801 to 1937 http://www.histpop.org/
Look at changes between census questions, structures and
geographies
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13. Previous Censuses
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14. Previous Censuses
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15. BL Official Publications Collection – Census Reports
1851 Population Pyramid
 UK Census Reports 85+
80-84
 BL holds statistical reports relating 75-79
70-74
65-69
to each census. 60-64
55-59
Age Group
50-54
45-49 Male
 Reports for 1921-1991 in the 40-44
35-39
30-34
Female
reading room on open shelves
25-29
20-24
15-19
10-14
 National and county aggregate
5-9
0-4
1,500,000 1,000,000 500,000 0 500,000 1,000,000 1,500,000
reports for England and Wales, Num ber of People
Scotland, Northern Ireland and
Great Britain Number of Households Lacking or sharing Amenities (England and
Wales)
 Aggregate statistical information 3,500,000
at each level for all census 3,000,000
2,500,000
questions 2,000,000
 Compliments Histpop which has 1,500,000
1,000,000
digitised reports between 1801 – 500,000
1937 and Casweb: 1971 – 2001 0
1951 (Lack or 1961 (Lack or 1971 (Lack or 1981 (Lack or 1991 (Lack or 2001 (Without
Share Flushing Share Flushing Share Inside Share Inside Share Inside Sole use of
 Some older reports can be found Toilet) Toilet) Toilet) Toilet) Toilet and/or Toilet and/or
Bath or Shower) Bath or Shower)
in parliamentary papers
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16. Maps
 The library holds a number of maps generated with census and
population data from UK and all over the world
Ireland map for railways
Augustus Petermann, Map of the British Isles, elucidating the
distribution of the population based on the 1841 census.
London,1861. 16

17. Spatial Data
Edina Digimap and UK
Borders
http://edina.ac.uk/digimap/
http://edina.ac.uk/ukborders/
Go Geo! Search
http://www.gogeo.ac.uk/cgi-bin/index.cgi
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18. Spatial Data
Landmap
http://landmap.mimas.ac.uk/
Ordanance Survey Open Data
http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/products/os-opendata.htm
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19. UK Government Open Data
http://data.gov.uk/
Admin and Statistical data portal
Office for National Statistics
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/default.asp
http://www.neighbourhood.statistics.gov.uk/dissemination/
https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/Default.asp
National Digital Archive of Datasets
http://www.ndad.nationalarchives.gov.uk/
Regional
http://data.london.gov.uk/
http://datagm.org.uk/
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20. International open data
United Nations
http://data.un.org/
European Union
http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/eurostat/home/
OECD
http://www.oecd.org/statsportal/
World Bank
http://data.worldbank.org/
IMF
http://www.imf.org/external/data.htm
Public Data EU
http://publicdata.eu/
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21. UK Web Archive http://www.webarchive.org.uk
 Selective Web Archive
 over 11,000 websites collected since
2004
 over 50,000 instances
 Over 16TB of compressed data
 British Library, National Library
of Wales, JISC
 Also National Library of Scotland,
the National Archives, Wellcome
Library
 Many collaborators
 eg Women’s Library, Live Arts
Development Agency, Quakers in
Britain
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22. A typical event-based special collection
Collect, preserve, and
make accessible
eb sites of
cultural and scholarly
importance
from the UK domain

23. A comprehensive special collection
Collect, preserve, and
make accessible
eb sites of
cultural and scholarly
importance
from the UK domain

24. JISC UK Web Domain Dataset (1996-2010)
Funded by JISC to create a research collection of UK
websites
 Collaboration between the Internet Archive, JISC and the
British Library
 Copy of subset of the Internet Archive’s web collection that
relates to the UK
 470466 files, mostly arc.gz, with 4494 warc.gz.
 Total size: 32TB
 No local access – possible through the Internet Archive
 Can be used to generate secondary datasets and make
these available
 Analytical access the main route
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25. Other Data and Resources
Arts and Humanities data Service (AHDS)
http://ahds.ac.uk
Guardian Data Store
http://www.guardian.co.uk/data-store
Financial Times
http://www.ft.com/home/uk
Economist Intelligence Unit
http://www.eiu.com/Default.aspx
UK Government Web Archive
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/webarchive/
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26. Other Data and Resources
 The Mass Observation Archive
 Specialises in material about everyday life
in Britain. It contains papers generated by
the original Mass Observation social
research organisation (1937 to early
1950s), and newer material collected
continuously since 1981
 http://www.massobs.org.uk/index.htm
 A Vision of Britain through Time
 Contains historical Maps, Census Reports,
Election reports and other historical
material, searchable by local area.
 http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/
 Charles Booth Online Archive
 Gives access to archive material from the
Booth collections ofthe London School of
Economics and Political Science and the
Senate House Library
 http://booth.lse.ac.uk/
Images from The Mass Observation Archive
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27. Analysis Tools and Software
Statistical
- SPSS, SATA,
R (open source)
GIS - ArcGIS, MapInfo,
Quantum GIS (open
source)
Excel
Online Tools
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28. Examples of Online Analysis Tools
ESDS NESSTAR
http://nesstar.esds.ac.uk
ESDS Spatial Tools
http://www.ccsr.ac.uk/esds/gis/
Economists Online Dataverse
http://dvn.iq.harvard.edu/dvn/dv/NEEO
United Nations
http://data.un.org/Explorer.aspx
London Profiler
http://www.londonprofiler.org/
London Heat Map
http://www.londonheatmap.org.uk/Mapping/
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29. Online Mapping Tools using Google Maps
MapTube
http://www.maptube.org/
Google Drive
https://drive.google.com
Gmap Creator
http://www.casa.ucl.ac.uk/software/gmapcreator.asp
Other, more advanced online mapping
(requires coding):
Open Layers http://openlayers.org/
OS Openspace
http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/web-services/os-openspace/index.html
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30. Data Visualization
Presenting data in a useful
and interesting manner
Allowing concepts to be
easily understood
Lots of examples online
e.g:
http://flowingdata.com/
http://datavisualization.ch/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/n
ews/datablog
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31. Citing Data
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32. DataCite
DataCite is an international consortium which
aims to:
 Establish easier access to research data on
the Internet
 Increase acceptance of research data as
legitimate, citable contributions to the scholarly
record
 Support data archiving that will permit results
to be verified and re-purposed for future study
 http://datacite.org/
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33. Connecting an Article with the Underlying Data

URLs are not persistent
 (e.g. Wren JD: URL decay in
MEDLINE- a 4-year follow-up
study. Bioinformatics. 2008, Jun
1;24(11):1381-5).
Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs)
offer a solution
 Mostly widely used identifier for

scientific articles Dataset
 Researchers, authors, publishers Yancheva et al (2007). Analyses
know how to use them on sediment of Lake Maar.
 Put datasets on the same playing PANGAEA.
field as articles doi:10.1594/PANGAEA.587840
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34. Metadata Search http://search.datacite.org/ui
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35. Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID)
http://about.orcid.org/
•Infrastructure is being created for researchers to build up an open
portfolio of research objects

36. Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID)
•Register an ORCID ID www.orcid.org and link published papers
using ORCID’s tools

37. Sharing Data - Figshare
•Non published outputs (working papers, datasets) can be deposited
in figshare http://figshare.com/ given a DataCite DOI and linked back
and added to ORCID profile

38. Impact of Data
•View the impact of your work using traditional citation metrics and
social citations http://www.impactstory.org/

39. Depositing and Archiving Data
Why Archive?
Institutional Repositories
UK Data Archive/ESDS
Metadata and Code!
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40. BL Social Science Research Blog
http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/socialscience/
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41. Contact Details
John Kaye
Lead Curator – Digital Social Science
Socials Sciences The British Library
96 Euston Road London
NW1 2DB
Telephone: 020 7412 7450
Email: john.kaye@bl.uk
Twitter: @johnkayebl
http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/socialscience/
Slides - http://www.slideshare.net/johnkayebl
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