The estate of G. W. Skinner has provided for the creation of a digital archive for the long-term preservation of his work. The archive will consist of raw data files, structural variables, data dictionaries, derived variables, spatial datasets, and various forms of documentation related to Skinner's research on Regional Systems Analysis. This working group website has been set up as a staging area to facilitate the organization of the digital files into a series of research projects and to evaluate the component datasets and working drafts that were part of those projects. Each project will go through various stages of evaluation, or vetting, in the first case to make sure that the components for each project have been grouped correctly, and in the second case to test the most recent version of the project files to make sure that they can be opened with existing software applications. Finally, when a working version of the project files has been finalized, they will be packed up with documentation for publication in a permanent archive under the auspices of the DataVerse Network. Early drafts will also be preserved in compressed versions and posted as auxiliary files to the projects published in DataVerse.

The papers, correspondence, and maps from Skinner's estate are now archived at the University of Washington. Scans of the Skinner map collection are now searchable and available online.

Navigation of the site is currently set up along three taxonomies:

--Digital Resources (lists the contents of the hard disks from Skinner HRS offices)

--Region (view the projects, with descriptive attachments)

--Researchers (view the projects worked on by particular researchers and co-authors)

--Time Period (view the projects based on temporal scope)

See also the snapshot of the UC DAVIS Regional Systems Analysis Website (circa 2008)

A good synopsis of Skinner's work is found in this article by Daniel Little (17 Oct 2008)

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