University Information System RUSSIA
http://uisrussia.msu.ru

The University Information System RUSSIA (UIS RUSSIA) has been designed and is maintained as a corporate digital library for research and education in economics and social sciences. The project started in early 90’s, in 2000 the system was implemented and is being developed meeting the RF university community interests and challenges. Access is free but registration-based. Currently 280+ universities, institutes, colleges are registered as collective users. Access is also provided to think tanks, RAS institutes, government agencies and local administrations staff, public libraries. More than 4000 specialist are registered as individual users

The UIS RUSSA maintains collections of social domain data and documents, currently up to four million documents from 100+ collections are integrated. Appropriate retrospective coverage and regular update is provided. Contents include official data and documents (laws, presidential decrees and directives, governmental enactments, acts and regulations); international agreements signed by the Russian Federation; stenograms (daily records) of State Duma; state statistics from Federal State Statistics Service, Ministry of Finances, State Treasury and other agencies; analytical reports of government agencies; analytical journals; reports and databases maintained by leading “think tanks”; academic publications; international organizations documents and databases; foreign universities collections. All the archives are obtained from official holders/producers under legal agreements with Moscow State University Research Computing Center.

At first stage of the project technology for front end automatic content-based text processing has been designed and implemented. The procedures include processing of electronic texts in several main formats (ASCII, HTML, Microsoft® Word) in Windows and operating as DLL; morphological analysis of Russian/English texts; terms' recognition/disambiguation; Thesaurus-based thematic analysis — event categorization, indexing, annotation/summarization; download of results to an Oracle database server. The technology provides for cross collections search and query refinement

Since 2003 the UIS RUSSIA team concentrates at statistical domain aiming to implement an infrastructure for statistical education and evidence-based applied analysis and full scale social and economic investigations. The RF State Statistical Agency publications are processed and arranged into databases «Regions of Russia», «Cities» and «Municipalities». The databases update indicators on 83 RF regions, 1071 cities and 25000+ municipal units. The current version of «Regions» database maintains up to 1500 indicators with retrospective coverage since 1995, the «Cities» updates 700+ indicators, some starts in 70’s, the «Municipalities» maintains 800 indicators from 2006. Each table is linked with the Rosstat methodology, statistical forms and filling instructions. These databases are updated annually following the State Statistics Agency official data publication. To provide access to monthly updated indicators a special database «Regions of Russia: Dynamic Statistics» is accomplished.

Visualization tools are implemented in databases, including business graphics and GIS technologies. The latter provide for map-based regions investigation like social-, economic-, ecological data based typology of regions.

The tools for statistical analysis have been accomplished, the following concepts may be calculated on-line: correlation factors, linear regression, extrapolation, secondary variables for static and time series, criterion selection.

The databases form the core of the information infrastructure to enhance teaching of statistics and core quantitative analysis methods in the economic and social sciences. To assist users in quantitative methods learning an electronic lesson is accomplished. Other lessons are under construction.

The databases functionality is enhanced by the procedure to make a region/city/municipal unit-based search and retrieve both indicators and analytical publications available in the UIS RUSSIA holdings.

Since 2012 the MSU Historical Faculty electronic resource “Dynamics of Social and Economic Development of Russia in XIX-early XX centuries” is available via the UIS RUSSIA interface.