As originally proposed in 1998, the purpose of the External Research Resources Core is to provide support to researchers at the University of Wisconsin - Madison and our off-campus collaborators who either are, or are planning to, conduct research concerning health and aging. Our affiliates are sociologists, epidemiologists, economists, political scientists, public health specialists, and doctors. Our over-riding objective is to create a one-stop shop for information and services that allow researchers to spend their time doing research, period. Our projects database, listing all of the aging-related research projects in which our affiliates have been engaged, and our project bibliography that lists hundreds of aging-related publications written by our affiliates over the past ten years demonstrate the success of our hands-on approach. Despite the limited resources that have been made available to the two data cores, our small size, and our status as a relative new-comer in the data community, our Data Archivist/Analyst and Librarian are viewed as innovative, knowledgeable, and approachable team. We believe that one reason for this reputation is a direct result of our investment in Nesstar, the software that powers our on-line data archive. This software suite, which consists of server software, a browser interface, and metadata authoring tools, allows potential secondary data users to search for datasets and variables of interest, browse data documentation via an extraordinarily user-friendly drill-down folder-style display system, perform basic tabular and regression analyses, and to subset and extract variables and cases of interest in popular file formats (e.g., SAS, SPSS, and Stata). The ability to search all levels of metadata, from study title, abstract, and keywords, down to variable values and value labels, and the capacity to link search results to important contextual metadata is unique to the Nesstar system: SDA, DataFerret, and ICPSR's homegrown systems do not offer equivalent capabilities. Because the web-based user interface for our Nesstar archive is accessible to potential data users with a wide range of computing skills and statistical experience, and because we do not charge a membership fee or otherwise restrict access to our online archive, we can provide equitable, user-friendly access to a variety of end users, from high school students and advocacy groups to independent policy analysts and academic researchers. In addition, because our archive can be linked seamlessly with Nesstar-based archives around the world, data posted to BADGIR are more likely to be used for comparative and cross-national studies than are studies posted to an isolated project or archival website. We are in good company here: other data archives powered by the Nesstar software include the East Sussex County Council and the Eastern Region Public Health Authority (in England), the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, the International Household Survey Network, the Local Government Data Unit - Wales, Norhealth (in Norway), the Australian Social Science Data Archive, DANS (the Danish Data Archive), the European Social Survey, the German Social Science Infrastructure Services and ZA, the General Social Survey (at NORC), and the UK Data Archive. Because we were one of the first users outside of the three European data Archives who participated in the development of this metadata authoring tool and web server, we were able to convince Nesstar to include a number of important modifications in content and formatting in the server-side interface with which the user interacts, and to the metadata authoring tool. Our Data Analyst/Archivist has been invited to speak about the merits of Nesstar relative to other metadata authoring and server-side browser interfaces. CDHA hosted the first Nesstar training course outside of the European Union in the first five-year funding period. Data Librarians at NORC attended this training course, and they now run their own Nesstar-powered on-line data archive for the General Social Survey.
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