NESSTAR: A Semantic Web application for statistical data and metadata

The social sciences are big producers and consumers of statistical data. Sur-veys, censuses and opinion polls are the basic sources for most quantitative research in sociology and economy. These data are collected and preserved by specialised Data Archives and traditionally disseminated to researchers as datafiles stored on some form of magnetic media and accompanied by bulky printed documentation. Given that there are many such Archives, each one with its own distinct access and dissemination procedures, it is often not easy for a researcher to find and get hold of the right information. In 1998 the European Union funded a research and development project named Networked Social Science Tools and Resources (NESSTAR). The aim of the project was to bring the advantages of ”instant access ” to the world of statistical data dissemination. At the time the WWW had already made the publishing of textual and graphical information easier and cheaper than ever. Huge amount of information had been made available world-wide at a press of a button and at virtually no cost. The question that NESSTAR was called to answer was if it was possible to create a ”Data Web ” that would make just as easy to publish, locate and access statistical data. NESSTAR provides at least some of the basic element of the Data Web ”dream ” and does so by building on both the current WWW infrastructure and the new Semantic Web technologies. The NESSTAR project has been followed by FASTER [2], another Eu-ropean project that has further developed the Data Web concept and im-plementation. NESSTAR and FASTER have been sufficiently successful to convince two of their main contractors, the University of Essex in England and the University of Bergen in Norway, to spin off a company to exploit commercially the Data Web technology. Nesstar Ltd is currently busy de-veloping Data Web solutions for a number of international clients