The new CESSDA data catalogue

The new CESSDA Data Catalogue provides a unified multilingual search/browse interface to Social Science and Humanities (SSH) data stored in decentralised and specialised data centres operated by CESSDA Service Providers. The metadata describing the Service Providers’ holdings is harvested via Open APIs and indexed (by language) to provide an aggregated collection covering a wide range of institutions.

This work relates to two of CESSDA’s four pillars, namely Technology and Tools & Services (the other two being Training and Trust). By building a modern cloud-based infrastructure, CESSDA is able to operate its services efficiently and effectively without dependency on any single national infrastructure. The adoption of state-of-the containerisation methods ensures the scalability needed to serve the European SSH research community. Secondly, by mapping existing DDI metadata formats to the CESSDA Metadata Model, existing well established (e.g. OAI-PMH) interfaces and exchange methods can be seamlessly harnessed to underpin this addition to CESSDA’s suite of user friendly tools & services.