Dissemination and Outreach Core

The Dissemination and Outreach Core is a shared resource for large-scale demographic data infrastructure projects at MPC. The Core serves these projects, other MPC members, and thousands of users at other institutions. By sharing a common user-support and outreach infrastructure, we gain operating efficiencies and improve the standard of service. The Dissemination and Outreach Core has three main objectives: 1) providing user support assistance for MPC demographic data products; 2) improving data and documentation for those projects; and, 3) performing outreach activities to increase the use of MPC demographic data among academic researchers, policymakers, educators, and journalists. Like other MPC Cores, the majority of funding for the Dissemination and Outreach Core comes from funds other than the R24. Most MPC data infrastructure projects include at least limited funds for dissemination and outreach. Those funds can be used to pay for project-specific user support, but they cannot be used to provide general administration and coordination across projects; accordingly, the modest R24 funding is essential to provide centralized, efficient, and cost-effective outreach and dissemination. R24 funding also supports shared equipment and services that benefit all MPC data infrastructure projects and cannot easily be allocated to a particular project.