About COOL RDC

The Carleton, Ottawa, Outaouais local Research Data Centre (COOL RDC) is an inter-university facility whose partners include Statistics Canada, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Carleton University, University of Ottawa and Université du Québec en Outaouais.

The COOL RDC provides secure access to detailed Statistics Canada data for researchers with Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council -approved research projects. The RDC is part of a national university initiative to use Statistics Canada master files with a view to strengthen social research capacity and support social and economic policy analysis in Canada. The new centre, and the only intra-provincial RDC, is joining a network of RDCs located in thirteen universities, working in collaboration with Statistics Canada and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). The mandate of the COOL RDC is to help support research and training in the social statistics and related fields, to create new knowledge about Canadian society and to facilitate a network of social research across the country.

The COOL RDC will host a variety of longitudinal data files from surveys such as the National Population Health Survey, the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth, the General Social Survey and the Labour and Income Dynamics Survey. The RDC will complement Statistics Canada's Data Liberation Initiative program which provides access to public data through university libraries.

The COOL RDC is housed in a quiet, comfortable and highly secure environment in the Morisset Library building at the University of Ottawa.