Library Resource Spotlight: UK Data Archive and UK Data Service
With data and data skills becoming increasingly prevalent, let’s introduce our resources for this month – UK Data Archive and UK Data Service!
The UK Data Archive is home to the UK’s largest collection of digital research data in the social sciences and humanities, and provides a trusted digital repository for national data resources including many surveys conducted by the Office for National Statistics, whilst the UK Data Service is the principal repository for social, economic and population research data in the UK and hosts the largest trusted digital archive of its kind.
Users can browse these collections of data by utilising the basic search functionality, which allows users to search by keywords or phrases, and the search filters allow users to refine their search results by geographical location, data type, and data access level as well as time period and topic. There is also the option to browse by theme, including crime, health, economics, and labour and employment, as well as explore other discovery tools, such as Census, Nesstar Visualisation Catalogue and QualiBank.
There’s also themed series’ of data that can be explored, such as the Health Survey for England which began in 1991 and has been carried out annually ever since, the Living Costs and Food Survey which began in 2008 as part of a household expenditure survey that has been conducted each year since 1957, and the Understanding Society Study which began in 2009 and is a multi-topic household survey. Additionally, users can brush up on their data skills through the training webinars and online guides, which are aimed at helping you gain the data analysis skills needed to produce research with real impact, and cover topics from being new to using data to learning about the most commonly used software tools.
Get exploring the UK’s largest collection of digital research data and brush up on your data skills at the same time. The UK Data Archive and the UK Data Service are both available on the library’s A-Z of online resources and there’s a handy help page with advice and guidance too!
