What is OSIRIS and what is an OSIRIS dictionary file?

Developed in the 1960s and 1970s at the Institute for Social Research (The University of Michigan), OSIRIS was a software package created to manage and analyze social science datasets. OSIRIS dictionaries were datamaps written in EBCDIC with both alphanumeric and binary representations. The SAS OSIRIS library engine reads both OSIRIS data files and dictionaries that are encoded in the legacy EBCDIC format. Consequently, the format of these files should not be changed and the binary option invoked when moving these files via FTP.

ICPSR is currently replacing many of the OSIRIS dictionaries with SAS, SPSS, and Stata setup files. There is no timetable for this process. For more information on downloading and using these files, see the description file for those collections that include OSIRIS dictionaries.