New: Abacus download data service

The Abacus Data Services is a web-based data exploration, direct data downloading, extraction and analysis tool which greatly improves access to statistical data for researchers, teachers and students.

Abacus provides two primary means of finding and accessing Survey Data as well  as other data files. The first is via the Direct data downloading. Researchers may browse the complete collection of data files and any accompanying documentation, and download the desired data to their desktops.

SFU Researchers may now access data from the shared Abacus collection or from the Research Data Library's collection of data survey files, GIS datasets, and geospatial data as it becomes available.  Note: SFU researchers will be restricted to only viewing the metadata of the other collections.

We hope this new  data service will make data exploration and access to data a much more enjoyable experience. Should you have any questions or require assistance please Walter Piovesan, walter@sfu.ca at the Research Data Library.

To access Abacus, click the SFU Member link on the top right hand side of the page from the Abacus home page:

The second option is via the NESSTAR data discovery tool. The NESSTAR server provides researchers the ability to search for survey questions and variables  across hundreds of datasets held in a growing number of collections. NESSTAR supports basic tabulation and analysis online, and allows for the downloading of most datasets into statistical software for further analysis. (Note: not all data files have been loaded into the NESSTAR server.)

Abacus is a new data services that has been developed at the University of British Columbia in partnership with Simon Fraser University, the University of Northern British Columbia and the University of Victoria.