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4                                                                                             IASSIST Quarterly Summer 2002                                                                                                                                   IASSIST Quarterly Summer 2002                                                                             5

Editor’s Notes

The IASSIST Quarterly is not a newsletter. The frequency 
and production time means that the content cannot stay in 
the category of news. Furthermore the content does not 
resemble a traditional newsletter. There are no letters to 
the editor nor replies or rejoinders from the membership. 
Letters and replies are most welcome. But the “welcome” 
does not seem to have any effect, as the content of the 
Quarterly is almost exclusively papers from presentations 
at the IASSIST conferences.  Therefore a name like 
“IASSIST Quarterly Studies” would better cover the 
function. Is the name important? “Whatʼs in a name”? “IQ” 
is a beautiful name and most IASSIST members know the 
type of content to be found in the IASSIST Quarterly. As 
you all probably are fully aware of the IQ is also available 
in an electronic form on the internet (www.iassistdata.org). 
The IQ is a media that is part of IASSIST as a virtual 
community. I find that the IQ is important for IASSIST also 
as a traditional community. With the paper version of IQ 
delivered to your door you receive the physical evidence 
of our professional affiliation. It reminds you that IASSIST 
does exist in reality, between conferences!

This issue 26-2 of the IASSIST Quarterly contains the 
following three articles:  

At the Amsterdam conference in 2001 with the theme 
“Collaborative Working in the Social Science Cyber 
Space” Julia Paris from Technikon Witwatersrand in 
Johannesburg (South Africa) made a presentation in the 
session on IASSIST. To the conference Julia Paris brought 
original African artifacts (not software and data) and 
this added further color to the presentation on IASSIST 
and the technology collaboration in Africa. (The IQ can 
unfortunately only present the text). The article gives a 
more complex view of Africa than the “poverty-stricken, 
politically unstable, war-torn continent” that is often 
presented in the news-media. There are technical initiatives 
and therefore involvement and further collaboration with 
IASSIST is recommended. 

At the session “Tuning Up Your Web Site: Increasing Its 
Usability” at the Storrs 2002 conference Stuart Smith 
from the University of Manchester gave at presentation on 
“Creating Accessible Style and Content for MIMAS Social 
Sciences Web Pages”. The presentation was based upon the 
paper that appears in the IQ: “Accessibility, Social Sciences 
and the Development of Content Management Systems”. 
The paper addresses how the use of the web has introduced 
a “digital divide” and how the data services will overcome 
these technical and cultural issues. The paper demonstrates 
how the presentation of web-pages on the internet has 
received a great deal of attention and shows how it is now 
possible for the content staff to concentrate on the content 

of the web-pages. 

At the same 2002 conference a session was dedicated 
to “Delivering the U.K. Census: Web-Based Access”. 
In this session Lucy Bell from the UK Data Archive 
presented the paper “Let us bring you to your census: 
recent developments in UK census data provision”. The 
paper describes the process of setting up a one-stop 
Census Registration Service (CRS). This is an online 
system for providing quick and simple user registration 
for access to the resources from the 1971, 1981, 1991 and 
2001 UK decennial censuses. As the number of products 
associated with each census has steadily grown it has 
become important to make an easier access to the census 
materials. This became the project for “one-stop Census 
Registration Service”. The article presents the questionnaire 
sent to users and summarizes the results revealing issues 
of dissatisfaction with the earlier process as well as 
preferences for improved functionality with the new 
system. 

Be sure to enjoy the IASSIST web-site. You can 
locate many of the PowerPoint presentations at 
www.IASSISTdata.org. (click “Conferences” and then 
“Multimedia Presentations” under the “Features” heading). 
If you have made a conference presentation that is missing 
on the web-site you should contact the collector Lisa 
Neidert (lisan@umich.edu). 

Papers for the IASSIST Quarterly are most welcome. 
Please contact the editor (kbr@sam.sdu.dk) about 
submissions. 

Karsten Boye Rasmussen,  November 2002  

 

mailto:lisan@umich.edu
mailto:kbr@sam.sdu.dk