TY - CONF
T1 - IPUMS-International: Free, Worldwide Microdata Access Now for Censuses of 62 Countries--80 by 2015
AU - Sobek, Matthew
AU - McCaa, Robert
AU - Ruggles, Steven J
AU - Thomas, Wendy L
PY - 2011
Y1 - 2011
N2 - The Minnesota Population Center (MPC), through the IPUMS-International census microdata project, archives the world's largest stock of census microdata and documentation. A decade of labor assiduously scouring local, national, regional, and international archives on every continent is beginning to bear fruit. Microdata for over 350 censuses for more than 120 countries are safely ensconced in the MPC digital archives. Metadata from more than 900 censuses are catalogued and now being disseminated world-wide without cost in cooperation with National Statistical Institute(NSI) partners and the Integrated Health Survey Network, using the latest international standards for electronic metadata. 5,000 researchers representing more than ninety countries are registered to access confidentialized, integrated microdata without payment and with complete academic freedomthanks to a uniform licensing agreement endorsed by almost one-hundred NSIs. Integration lowers the barriers to entry and facilitates comparative research over space and time.For the future, we plan to integrate and disseminate confidentialized samples of the 2010 round censuses of the sixty-two countries already represented in the database. Samples of an additional 20-30 countries will be released to the global scientific community as time and resources permit. New initiatives are also planned: boundary files for GIS applications, an on-line tabulator forregistered researchers, a secure enclave offering access to full-count microdata at the MPC and perhaps virtual enclaves for partners world-wide with certified secure sites. Several NSI partners have already granted assent for constructing a pilot at the MPC. Before the end of this year, thanks to major funding from the National Science Foundation (USA), a new project, TerraPop, begins--an initiative to combine population microdata with climate and land cover data.
AB - The Minnesota Population Center (MPC), through the IPUMS-International census microdata project, archives the world's largest stock of census microdata and documentation. A decade of labor assiduously scouring local, national, regional, and international archives on every continent is beginning to bear fruit. Microdata for over 350 censuses for more than 120 countries are safely ensconced in the MPC digital archives. Metadata from more than 900 censuses are catalogued and now being disseminated world-wide without cost in cooperation with National Statistical Institute(NSI) partners and the Integrated Health Survey Network, using the latest international standards for electronic metadata. 5,000 researchers representing more than ninety countries are registered to access confidentialized, integrated microdata without payment and with complete academic freedomthanks to a uniform licensing agreement endorsed by almost one-hundred NSIs. Integration lowers the barriers to entry and facilitates comparative research over space and time.For the future, we plan to integrate and disseminate confidentialized samples of the 2010 round censuses of the sixty-two countries already represented in the database. Samples of an additional 20-30 countries will be released to the global scientific community as time and resources permit. New initiatives are also planned: boundary files for GIS applications, an on-line tabulator forregistered researchers, a secure enclave offering access to full-count microdata at the MPC and perhaps virtual enclaves for partners world-wide with certified secure sites. Several NSI partners have already granted assent for constructing a pilot at the MPC. Before the end of this year, thanks to major funding from the National Science Foundation (USA), a new project, TerraPop, begins--an initiative to combine population microdata with climate and land cover data.
M3 - Paper
ER -