DREAM Lab: Data Training

Linda Detterman, ICPSR's Director of Membership and Marketing, outlines tools for discovering the data you need on the ICPSR Web site as part of our "In-Depth with ICPSR" series.

ProQuest continues the tradition of the Statistical Abstract beginning with the 2013 edition.

The U.S. Census and American Community Survey provide a wealth of social, economic, and housing information of use to social scientists, policy-makers, social workers, community activists, and anyone interested in understanding a specific population or community. For many, however, the complexity of the American FactFinder interface can be a hurdle to getting started. This webinar provides a concise introduction to the U.S. Census and American Community Survey focusing on the background information necessary for understanding and using current population statistics and the steps to successfully navigate American FactFinder in order to obtain the statistics you need. You don’t need to be a statistician to use these great statistics! This webinar will be useful for librarians new to the Census as well as those looking for new ways to present American FactFinder to users.

The United Nations gathers and produces a wealth of data on health, development, education, industry, and more--but given the complex structure of the United Nations and all of its publishing and research activities, it can be difficult to know where to begin the search for UN statistics and data. With UNdata from the United Nations Statistics Division, researchers can search many UN statistical databases through a single interface. In this session, we explored the benefits of starting a data search in UNdata, with a focus on gaining familiarity with the content that's available there as well as the ins and outs of the search interface. We also compared the contents and user experience of UNdata to several of the UN's other statistical resources.

In economics, historical data aren’t necessarily 200 years old; historical data could be two weeks old. That’s because economic data are revised, frequently. And those revisions mean that the historical data librarians find for patrons may not be the same values that an individual would have seen when the data were initially released.

Economic data are made from estimates. Over time, more information becomes available and these estimates are revised. Policy-makers, businesses, and consumers make economic and financial decisions based on unrevised data available at a point in time. These unrevised are useful for studying historic decisions and economic policies. This webinar describes sources available for uncovering historical economic data and methods for using those sources that provide a window into the past.

This session guides viewers in the use of DataFerrett, an analytical tool that searches and retrieves data across Federal datasets, to create complex tabulations, business graphics, and thematic maps. This introductory session demonstrates how to: browse (search & discover) the datasets accessible via TheDataWeb; select variables from datasets; create new variables from existing ones (recode); produce customized analyses using tables, graphs, and maps to save your analysis; and more.

Basics of pulling Datastream content into MS Excel.

This series of webcasts provides an overview of Eikon functionality and tools.