Implementing the Data Documentation Initiative at the Minnesota Population Center

Abstract The Data Documentation Initiative (DDI) is an emerging international specification for documentation of social science data. Designed as an archival standard to help preserve access to data and codebooks, the DDI is nonproprietary and hardware independent. By treating documentation as metadata—or data about data—the DDI will open the door to the development of generalpurpose automated software tools for accessing both data and documentation. The authors provide a background and history of the DDI and discuss the advantages of machine-processable documentation. They also describe several specific applications of DDI-compliant metadata currently under way at the Minnesota Population Center (MPC).