Database training offered

For more information, contact Judith Bailey, 216-368-4442 or jcb4@po.cwru.edu.

Posted 2/12/98

CWRU poverty center offers free access to database

CLEVELAND-The Center on Urban Poverty and Social Change at Case Western Reserve University offers free public access to CAN DO/VIN, a computerized county-wide database of crime, violence, and socioeconomic information. Training in how to use the database is available at a nominal charge.

CAN DO, short for Cleveland Area Network for Data and Organizing, contains data such as population and housing census figures; economic information including welfare dependency, mortgage lending, and new housing construction; vital statistics such as death and infant mortality rates; and housing information involving tax delinquency rates, properties, vacant land, and subsidized housing.

Socioeconomic data from CAN DO can be correlated with data from VIN, the Violence Information Network. VIN tracks incidents of violence and circumstances associated with them, such as the location of the incident and the victim's and assailant's address (by census tract), age, and race. VIN includes Cleveland Police and Juvenile Court records, homicide data from the coroner, child abuse data from the County Department of Human Services, and 911 calls. Except for the Cleveland Police and 911 records, all the data is county-wide.

Users can track data for the entire county, for the City of Cleveland or other municipalities, at the neighborhood level, or for any of the county's 495 census tracts.

Based at CWRU's Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences, the Poverty Center was established in l988 to address the problem of persistent and concentrated poverty in urban neighborhoods. The Poverty Center developed CAN DO/VIN to assist nonprofit agencies, community groups, government, and other service providers with their planning and program development, especially in regard to low-income populations and neighborhoods. In addition to various service providers, CAN DO/VIN users include academic researchers, graduate students, and members of the media.

Users can access CAN DO/VIN with a personal computer and modem, through the Cleveland Public Library system, through any CWRU library system, or through the Internet. Account numbers to access CAN DO/VIN are available free of charge. Users can also try CAN DO/VIN by logging in as "guest." More information about CAN DO/VIN is available on the Poverty Center's website at http://povertycenter.cwru.edu/cando.htm.

The Poverty Center will conduct training on how to use CAN DO/VIN from 1-4 p.m. on the following Fridays: February 20, March 20, April 17, May 29, and June 19. Training sessions are in the Computer Lab at the Mandel School, 11235 Bellflower Road. The $40 fee includes training, a user manual and a map book, which may also be purchased separately.

Participants learn how to access and navigate the databases, how to download data to a personal computer, and how to use data within a word processing package for printing and with a spreadsheet for further analysis.

For more information, call the Poverty Center at 216-368-6946.

-CWRU-