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About the Web Site

Mission and Goals of the Web Site

The primary mission of the ICPSR Web site is to provide to the social science research community efficient search capabilities, quick and easy access to data, information about ICPSR and its programs, and appropriate support and documentation. The architecture of the site should enable users to navigate the site logically and efficiently.

ICPSR Web Staff

  • Jon Brode, Systems Research Programmer/Web Developer
  • Wendi Fornoff, Web Designer/Administrator
  • Victoria Neff, Systems Research Programmer/Web Developer
  • Matthew A. Richardson, Web Designer/Administrator
  • Justin Todd, Web Designer

For questions or comments about the ICPSR Web site, please contact web-support@icpsr.umich.edu.

Privacy Policy

Our privacy policy explains the types of information we gather from visitors to our Web site.

Cookies

Cookies are used on the ICPSR Web site for authentication, so that site visitors avoid having to repeatedly pass through notification pages for each dataset they wish to download. Cookies set by the ICPSR Web site last for 9 hours.

Standards

We attempt to validate all pages on the ICPSR Web site to the XHTML 1.0 Transitional DTD, and we make use of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and Javascript on our site as well. For these reasons, our site is best viewed using modern Web browsers. We track which Web browsers are used on our site and set policy accordingly. If you are using an older browser, we highly recommend that you consider downloading a newer version of your preferred Web browser. However, you should note that not all browsers are designed to follow the standards set for HTML.

In order to meet the needs of all of our site visitors, ICPSR strictly follows the Web accessibility guidelines set forth by the Federal Governments's Section 508 Standards. Our accessibility page provides more information on how ICPSR meets the needs of differently-abled site visitors.

The ICPSR Web site also makes effective use of XML. Our metadata records are coded in XML using the DDI Specification, a standard for formatting codebooks. We have posted information on conditions of use, how we format our XML, and how our fields are mapped to the DDI elements. These XML documents are converted into HTML using Cocoon (a product created by the Apache XML Project).

Computing Environment

ICPSR delivers Web services via a Dell PowerEdge 6850 server. It features 32Gb of real memory, four 3.2 GHz dual-core Intel Xeon processors, and 500Gb of internal RAID-5 storage. The Web server is attached to the U-M campus backbone via a 1000 Mb/s network interface.

These systems are located in the ICPSR machine room. This room features dual high-capacity air cooling units, separate electrical circuits from other parts of the building, and dual APC Matrix 5000XR uninterruptible power supply units. The temperature of this room is monitored by the University of Michigan's Plant Operations department which will respond automatically if the temperature in the room exceeds 78 degrees Fahrenheit.

The machine room is attached to the building network via Cisco 3550 10/100/1000 ethernet switches, and the building network is connected to the campus network through a pair of Cisco 3550 switches. The campus network is a multi-gigabit backbone which connects to commercial IP networks and to Internet2's Abilene high-performance backbone.

The University of Michigan's Network Operations Center monitors all services 24 x 7 and notifies ICPSR staff in the event of any failure. ICPSR maintains a hardware service contract with Sun Microsystems for next-day replacement of any failed devices.

Technical Problems with the Web Site

Our Help page covers frequently asked questions about data use, as well as technical problems with the Web site. This faq describes technical difficulties encountered by ICPSR members, and possible solutions for those problems.

Outages

ICPSR is committed to ensuring that its members have access to its Web site and services. Recognizing that there are circumstances that we cannot control (power outages, network trouble outside our building, etc.), we nevertheless work to maintain access 99% of the time each month.

To ensure that we meet our service goals, ICPSR has contracted the University of Michigan's Network Operations Center (NOC) to monitor our server availability from outside our immediate network area 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Thus we are automatically informed of almost any service outage that our users may experience, and can react more swiftly to ensure minimal interruption of service.

In the event of a service outage, please bear in mind that ICPSR staff are only on-site to resolve server problems from 8am to 8pm EST, Monday through Friday. We will, however, endeavor to correct any problem as soon as possible.

If you have any problems, or have questions about a service outage, please don't hesitate to email netmail@icpsr.umich.edu.

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