NESSTAR is a set of internet-based tools to provide an enhanced online service for data providers and data users that gives easier and quicker access to data and information about that data. NESSTAR has been funded by the European Commission to the sum of £2 million under the 4th and 5th Framework IT Programmes.
Many government departments research institutes companies and others collect social and economic data. Many of these datasets are available for re-use particularly for research and education typically via data archives and libraries. Currently NESSTAR users can access this type of data from a number of European data archives including the 3 main partners in the project: UK Data Archive Norwegian Social Science Data Services and the Danish Data Archive. The number and type of data and data providers is continually expanding and NESSTAR is also being used by other data communities as an Intranet service. This article focuses upon the use of NESSTAR in serving the needs of users of data archives.</
