Pennsylvania Spatial Data Access Center files on Philadelphia. Includes shapefiles from the City of Philadelphia, as well as some state resources. Important files here are Street Centerlines, local area boundaries (planning commission, police, councilmanic districts) and aerial photos.

The Pennsylvania System of School Assessment, also known as PSSA, measures how well students have achieved in reading and mathematics according to Pennsylvania’s world-class academic standards. By using these standards, educators, parents and administrators can evaluate their students’ strengths and weaknesses to increase students’ achievement scores. According to the federal No Child Left Behind Act, students must be 100 % proficient in reading and math by 2014.

On this site you will find District and School Reports that contain: * Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) targets and results for 2007-08 * Last year's results and next year's targets * Discussion of results for parents and educators

EdNA (Education Names and Addresses) can be used to find name, address, administrator, and related information about the educational entities that PDE serves. These entities include school districts and their schools, intermediate units, area vocational technical schools, charter schools, nonpublic and private schools, higher education institutions, and many more.

This is a test

CLIR Report on reconceiving Research Libraries in the 21st Century

Karnow, Curtis E. A. “Data Morphing: Ownership, Copyright and Creation.” The MIT Press 27 (1994): 117-122.

Curtis Karnow offers an insightful analysis of the impact of the current virtual world on copyright relevance. After laying out the basic tenets of copyright culture and the ease with which content can be morphed he concludes that as technology produces a more complete virtual world copyright would in fact disintegrate. While copyright is indeed a useful and necessary right that helps define property, the technological revolution changes the very essence of property putting it in a chaotic and unstable environment that is virtual reality. In effect there are two consequences of property: (1) the elimination of invariable objects that render authors incapable of owning their own works, and (2) the amalgamation of structure, surface, background and fact.

This article contributes because current culture is more clearly defined as virtual and briefly explains how this is significant for copyright. The argument is that context is crucial in determining copyright use but when context merges with everything else it is like copyrighting the universe.

Project at UNC Chapel Hill, Cal Lee is contact person

The war in Iraq has thrust GIS and Geospatial technologies into the limelight. Each day the public is presented with maps, imagery, and other spatial data products in an effort to provide a visual representation of the latest developments. The following directory provides some valuable pointers and descriptions of companies that are providing GIS-based solutions to help the public follow the war in Iraq. If you know of additional resources that are of interest please send us some details.

use for data

Goals

* Conduct an analysis of previous and current models for sustainable digital preservation, and identify current best practices among existing collections, repositories and analogous enterprises.

* Develop a set of economically viable recommendations to catalyze the development of reliable strategies for the preservation of digital information.

* Provide a research agenda to organize and motivate future work in the specific area of economic sustainability of digital information.

The Data Audit Framework (DAF) provides organisations with the means to identify, locate, describe and assess how they are managing their research data assets. DAF combines a set of methods with an online tool to enable data auditors to gather this information. DAF will help ensure that research data produced in UK Higher Education Institutions is preserved and remains accessible in the long term.

The Digital Curation Centre (DCC) and DigitalPreservationEurope (DPE) are delighted to announce the release of the Digital Repository Audit Method Based on Risk Assessment (DRAMBORA) toolkit. This toolkit is intended to facilitate internal audit by providing repository administrators with a means to assess their capabilities, identify their weaknesses, and recognise their strengths. Digital repositories are still in their infancy and this model is designed to be responsive to the rapidly developing landscape. The development of the toolkit follows a concentrated period of repository pilot audits undertaken by the DCC, conducted at a diverse range of organisations including national libraries, scientific data centres and cultural and heritage data archives.

Shapefiles and data at the census tract, county, state, and other geographic levels going back to 1790 for counties, and 1910 for tracts. Also includes some data for downloading.

These are slides from the 4 day "Understanding Federal Statistics" workshop held in May 2008. They are a good starting point for learning about Federal Data Sources.

Data Science Journal, Volume 6, Open Data Issue, 17 June 2007

This site lists the publications of the DISc-UK DataShare project, whichis one of the best sources I know of to learn about the issues around data repositories.

Translates units into examples. Very useful for adding some reality to measurements.

24 cds record hourly surface readings internationally from 1995-2002.

This site is a non-profit, freely browsable database of crimes reported in Chicago.

It is not affiliated with the Chicago Police Department or with Google Maps. It is not an official source of crime information for the city of Chicago. Rather, it is an alternative view of public record that is available elsewhere.

Same sex and unmarried partner household data are collected for those households where the householder and his or her partner are not married, but are living in a close personal relationship. An unmarried partner can be of the same sex or opposite sex of the householder.

An unmarried partner, in an unmarried partner household, is an adult who is unrelated to the householder, but shares living quarters and has a close personal relationship with the householder. This relationship is based on the self-identification of respondents.

Here are some sources for your use:

• The American FactFinder contains two sources:
•  
  • American Community Survey   Table B11009, shows "Unmarried Partner Households by Sex of Partner."
  • Census 2000, Summary File (SF) 1 Table PCT14, "Unmarried Partner Households by Sex of Partner" is available for the nation, state, metropolitan statistical area, city/place, county, and various other geographies.
  • Additionally, same-sex unmarried partner household data were collected in the 1990 Census. The Technical Note on Same-Sex Unmarried Partner Data From the 1990 and 2000 Censuses provides guidance on comparing these data.
• The Census 2000 special reports include:
  • Married-Couple and Unmarried Partner Households: 2000 and
  • Population and Housing Table, PHC-T-19, Hispanic Origin and Race of Coupled Households provides race and gender for unmarried partner households for the U.S.
• The Census Bureau also collects data for same sex and unmarried partner households in ongoing survey programs, but does not regularly produce tabulations on this topic. For more information and special studies on the subjects of same gender couples and unmarried partner households based on the Census Bureau's survey programs, visit the Population Division Working Papers:
•  
  • No. 34, Unbinding the Ties: Edit Effects of Marital Status on Same Gender Couples.
  • No. 35, Racial-Ethnic and Gender Differences in Returns to Cohabitation and Marriage: Evidence for the Current Population Survey.
  • No. 36, How Does POSSLQ Measure Up? Historical Estimates of Cohabitation.

Google maps mashup includes data on population, housing cost, housing market, schools, safety, health, climate, income/work, and age ethnicity for the continental US.

annoyingly, their "explains" don't say where the data comes from, so it's hard to know how up to date it is. However, it's neat.

Choose a country and then select tabs for surveys, quikstats, and publications.

The Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) project is the third consecutive worldwide research project initiated by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to provide data and analysis on the population, health, and nutrition of women and children in developing countries. Its two predecessors, the World Fertility Survey (WFS) and the Contraceptive Prevalence Surveys (CPS), paved the way for the DHS project by focusing their research on questions related to fertility, family planning, and mortality. They also helped develop DHS' current reputation as a leader in the field of demographic and health research.

"EarthTrends is a comprehensive online database, maintained by the World Resources Institute, that focuses on the environmental, social, and economic trends that shape our world."

There are country reports and detailed, time series data tables for most countries in each of the following areas:
Coastal and Marine Ecosystems, Water Resources and Freshwater Ecosystems, Climate and Atmosphere, Population, Health and Human Well-being, Economics, Business and the Environment, Energy and Resources, Biodiversity and Protected Areas, Agriculture and Food, Forests, Grasslands and Drylands, Environmental Governance and Institutions.

You may be asked to  register to view content, but the registration process is easy and the content is free.

From page 247-248

TECHNICAL NOTE ON SAME-SEX UNMARRIED PARTNER DATA FROM THE 1990 AND 2000 CENSUSES

...In 1990, the edit and allocation procedures did not allow same-sex “spouse” combinations to occur, thus resulting in the allocation of one of these two items in order to achieve editing consistency among the responses.

...Processing steps were changed for Census 2000 for households that contained same-sex “spouses.” If the person with the “spouse” category was the same sex as the householder and if neither person had their sex previously allocated, a relationship response of “spouse” was allocated as an “unmarried partner” response.

...Two principal factors affected our decision to take this approach for Census 2000.

1.      Marriage Act (H.R. 3396) passed by the 104th Congress. This act instructs all federal agencies only to recognize opposite-sex marriages for the purposes of enacting any agency programs. In order for Census Bureau data to be consistent with this act and the data requirements of other federal agencies, same-sex spouse responses were invalidated. The legislation defines marriage and spouse as follows:

 “In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, or of any ruling, regulation or interpretation of the various administrative bureaus and agencies of the United States, the word ’marriage’ means only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife, and the word ’spouse’ refers only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or wife.” In order for the Census Bureau to be consistent with this act and the data requirements of other federal agencies, same-sex “spouse” responses were invalidated.

2.      The second factor took into consideration that couples in long term same-sex relationships may consider themselves as “married partners” and thus respond as such on the census form.  In addition, at the time of writing the editing program for Census 2000, there were several challenges in the courts concerning the legality of same-sex marriages. Clearly, we could not ignore the fact that same-sex spouse responses were going to be recorded during Census 2000. In light of these social and legal aspects and the lack of a key variable in the statistical allocation routine (marital status) the assignment of same-sex “married” couples to the same-sex “unmarried partner” category was the procedure chosen for the editing process. We were adverse to a randomized allocation of these responses after people had clearly marked a close relationship preference on the census form.

As a result of these changes in the processing routine, estimates of same-sex unmarried partners are not comparable between the 1990 and 2000 census.

The joint project of the North Carolina State University Libraries and the North Carolina Center for Geographic Information and Analysis will focus on collection and preservation of digital geospatial data resources from state and local government agencies in North Carolina.

The objectives of the project include:

• Identification of available resources through the NC OneMap data inventory
• Acquisition of at risk geospatial data, including static data such as digital orthophotos as well time series data such as local land records and assessment data
• Development of a digital repository architecture for geospatial data, using open source software tools such as DSpace
• Enhancement of existing geospatial metadata with additional preservation metadata, using Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard (METS) records as wrappers
• Investigation of automated identification and capture of data resources using emerging OpenGeospatial Consortium specifications for client interaction with data on remote servers
• Development of a model for data archiving and time series development

GRADE will investigate and report on the technical and cultural issues around the reuse of geospatial data within the JISC IE in the context of media-centric, informal and institutional repositories.

The aim of GRADE is to lay the foundations for a sustainable infrastructure (both cultural and technical) that underwrites the communities' substantial and ongoing investment in the utilisation of geospatial resources within the learning, teaching and research environments of UK academia.

By Julie Linden and Anne Green at Yale. 

Digitization has the potential to transform scholarly use of data found in print statistical publications. While presenting images of statistical tables in a digital library environment may be desirable, the full potential of such material can be realized only if the resulting digital objects are easy to search and manipulate and are accompanied by sufficient metadata to support extraction of numbers from tables and comparison of numbers across tables.

Free Registration Required.

Information is at the sub-county level, but only one level beneath county, generally, so Philadelphia is broken only into Planning districts.

Funded by a 3-year grant from the William Penn Foundation, the Metropolitan Philadelphia Indicators Project combines two types of information to illuminate conditions and trends in our 9-county region (defined as the central cities of Philadelphia and Camden along with the Pennsylvania counties of Bucks, Chester, Delaware and Montgomery, and the New Jersey counties of Burlington, Camden, Gloucester and Salem). The first is a set of social, environmental and economic indicators that portray the quality of life in the region’s communities. The second type of information comes from an annual household survey conducted by Temple’s Institute for Survey Research, asking respondents across the region how they assess the quality of life in their communities. Tracking over time the changes in the indicators and in the survey responses, we can better understand how citizens’ perceptions relate to the changing conditions on the ground.

This research project is based in the Department of Government at the University of Essex, UK, is part of the ESRC 'One Europe or Several?' research programme.

The principal aim of the project is to explain the role of electoral systems in the process of democratisation in post-communist Europe. The investigation will focus on twelve core countries (Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia and Ukraine), but where available we have provided data for other post-communist states.

This website is part of the dissemination strategy of the project. It includes and on-line database of election results and electorally-relevant laws from throughout Eastern Europe. The International Foundation for Electoral Systems and the Association of Central and East European Election Officials contributed to the construction of the database.

The Election Law section of the database includes election laws (parliamentary and presidential election laws, country-wide regional election laws, universal electoral codes, and laws on basic guarantees) and other legislation relevant to elections (constitutional provisions, political party laws, campaign finance laws, media laws, and other relevant legislation).

Laws from 12 countries (Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia and Ukraine) can be searched by country, election year and by twelve topic areas.

The Election Results section of the database includes results for parliamentary and presidential elections dating back to 1990 in each of the 12 countries, plus other information such as number of registered voters, turnout, votes cast, and total valid votes. Constituency level results of parliamentary elections from the Czech Republic, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia and Ukraine are also available.

Candidate data (downloadable SPSS and Excel files) and lists of relevant internet links supplement the database.

Download Tables from the CTTP by tract, county, state, etc. The best place for demographics by place of work.