California Counts Prototype Update

Background

California Counts, CDL’s planned gateway to social science data, is Phase I of CDL’s government information initiative.  California Counts will provide a single, easy-to-use, WWW interface through which users can easily find, combine, display, and use data.  The California Counts Prototype will assess the feasibility of providing agency produced numeric data via the WWW.

Content

The prototype will contain data about California that is produced by California State agencies and federal agencies.  The data included will be of wide interest to both researchers and the general public.  The data selected for the prototype are diverse in format, structure, and complexity, which will provide the Project Team with a representation of the types of challenges that will be encountered as the CA Counts system is populated.

Preliminary datasets are: USA Counties, Summary Tape File 3 (Decennial Census), Race/Ethnic Population with Age and Sex Detail, 1970-2040, Legal Immigration to California by County, 1990-1995, and California Statistical Abstract.  The California Counts project team is also investigating making California Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR) program results for 2000 available.

Release

California Counts is planned for release as a prototype in early January 2001. During this period it will undergo an extensive period of review, testing, evaluation, and campus coordination before going into full production.  The functionality provided in the prototype version of California Counts will be a first step and we hope that during the testing period Library Staff will collaborate with us on its development by using it, suggesting datasets to include, thinking about what functionality might be included to support enhanced data access, evaluating the help files, and perhaps testing it with selected users.

Information about the California Counts’ progress will be available at: [http://www.cdlib.org/libstaff/sharedcoll/gii/CDP/]