Camsis Codes…

So as one of the things on my Arcadia project to do list, I’ve started looking for consistent identifiers that might act as useful pivot points between various bits of the Cambridge’s online offerings (the public stuff on http://www.cam.ac.uk, as well as the Raven authenticated, password protected stuff on the de facto VLE, Camtools.

Ideally, I’d like to find to some Crown Jewels, something like OU course codes, for example, but I fear that is not going to be possible…

Anyway, it’s still early days yet, so as w have a meting with the Management Services Information Division, MISD tomorrow, to see whether or not they have data that we might use to generate affiinity strings for users of the Newton Library Catalogue, et al., I thought I’d have a look at whether different bits of their Student Administration and Records: CamSIS Coding Manual link together at all:

The diagram was created by cut’n’pasting data from the coding scheme web pages, then using Graphviz to chart the links.

For what it’s worth, here’s the dot file:
graph G {

"A01" [fontcolor = red];
"B01" [fontcolor = red];
"B03" [fontcolor = red];
"D01" [fontcolor = red];
"D03" [fontcolor = red];
"D05" [fontcolor = red];
"D06" [fontcolor = red];
"D07" [fontcolor = red];
"D08" [fontcolor = red];
"F01" [fontcolor = red];
"F02" [fontcolor = red];
"H01" [fontcolor = red];
"H03" [fontcolor = red];
"J01" [fontcolor = red];
"J02" [fontcolor = red];
"K01" [fontcolor = red];
"M01" [fontcolor = red];
"S01" [fontcolor = red];
"Z02" [fontcolor = red];
"Z04" [fontcolor = red];
"Z05" [fontcolor = red];
"Z06" [fontcolor = red];
"Z07" [fontcolor = red];

"A01" -- "Cambridge Colleges";
"B01" -- "County Codes";
"B03" -- "Country Codes";
"D01" -- "Current UCAS Courses";
"D03" -- "Current/Archived UCAS Courses";
"D05" -- "Academic Careers";
"D06" -- "Academic Programs";
"D07" -- "Academic Plan Types";
"D08" -- "Academic Plans";
"F01" -- "Awarding Bodies";
"F02" -- "GCSE Subject Codes";
"H01" -- "Subject (Tripos) Codes";
"H03" -- "Examination Paper Codes";
"J01" -- "Grading Codes";
"J02" -- "Further to Class Codes";
"K01" -- "Degrees";
"M01" -- "Faculties and Departments";
"S01" -- "Source of Fees";
"Z02" -- "Ethnicity Indicators";
"Z04" -- "Disability Indicators";
"Z05" -- "Program Status Codes";
"Z06" -- "Program Action Codes";
"Z07" -- "Program Reason Codes";
"A01" -- "College Code";
"A01" -- "College Description";
"B01" -- "County Code";
"B01" -- "County Description";
"B03" -- "Country Code";
"B03" -- "Country Description";
"D01" -- "Course Code";
"D01" -- "Course Description";
"D03" -- "Course Code";
"D03" -- "Course Description";
"D05" -- "Academic Careers Code";
"D05" -- "Academic Careers Description";
"D06" -- "Academic Program";
"D06" -- "Academic Program Description";
"D06" -- "Academic Careers Code";
"D07" -- "Academic Plan Type";
"D07" -- "Academic Plan Type Description";
"D08" -- "Academic Plan";
"D08" -- "Academic Plan Description";
"D08" -- "Academic Plan Type";
"F01" -- "Awarding Body Year";
"F01" -- "Awarding Body Sitting";
"F01" -- "Awarding Body";
"F01" -- "Awarding Body Description";
"F02" -- "GCSE Subject Code";
"F02" -- "GCSE Subject Code Description";
"F02" -- "EBL Subject Code";
"H01" -- "Subject Code";
"H01" -- "Department Name";
"H01" -- "Department Code";
"H03" -- "Subject Code";
"H03" -- "Exam Catalogue Number";
"H03" -- "Exam Title";
"J01" -- "Grading Scheme";
"J01" -- "Grading Basis";
"J01" -- "Grading Code";
"J01" -- "Grading Description";
"J02" -- "Subject Code";
"J02" -- "Further to Class Code";
"J02" -- "Further Class Description";
"K01" -- "Degree Code";
"K01" -- "Degree Code Description";
"K01" -- "Degree Short Description";
"M01" -- "Department Code";
"M01" -- "Department name";
"S01" -- "Fees Source Code";
"S01" -- "Fees Source Description";
"Z02" -- "Ethnicity Code";
"Z02" -- "Ethnicity Description";
"Z04" -- "Disability Code";
"Z04" -- "Disability Description";
"Z05" -- "Status Code";
"Z05" -- "Status Description";
"Z06" -- "Programme Action Code";
"Z06" -- "Programme Action Description";
"Z07" -- "Programme Action Code";
"Z07" -- "Programme Action Reason";
"Z07" -- "Programme Action Reason Description";
}

The next step is to see what else we can link into this, and maybe also draw boundaries around various clumps according to which unit owns those particular sets of data (MISD, the Computing Service, the Library, Caret/Camtools, the Departments, Cambridge University Press etc etc.). After all, even if we can find one data set that does manage to key into another, political or data protection boundaries may make it…. difficult to link those data sets and get the data flowing…