CUNY has a federation membership in the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research which encompasses all CUNY campuses.  Currently, CUNY’s ICPSR membership is paid for by the Central Office of Library Services.  CUNY benefits from federated membership include:  discounted membership fees; orders for off-line data (which must be made through the CUNY Graduate Center) and  travel stipends for the popular ICPSR Summer Program in Quantitative Methods of Social Research (also administered through The Graduate Center.)

Official Representatives
Each member institution of the CUNY Federation appoints an Official Representative to assist faculty and students with ICPSR data set access and to serve as the campus liaison to the ICPSR. For convenience, the list of CUNY Federation campuses and official representatives is given below. If the campus has ICPSR Direct (direct download of data sets from a valid network address--see below), this is indicated.

ICPSR Direct
The Graduate Center participates in the ICPSR Direct program. Any user of the Graduate Center computer network may download ICPSR data without going through an Official Representative. Other campuses of the CUNY Federation also participate in the ICPSR Direct program; these campuses are listed above.

First time users of ICPSR Direct must register with the ICPSR by creating an account with the MyData user registration and authentication  system. During a data download attempt through the ICPSR's web site, the user will be prompted either to log in as a returning user or to create a new account through the ICPSR's MyData user registration system. The user's "username" in this system is the user's email address; if the password for an existing account is needed, it can be requested online and sent to the user's email address.

Important notes about ICPSR Direct access
Access is restricted to authorized networks. To access ICPSR downloads, you must be logged on to a machine with an IP address within the range recognized by the ICPSR; this means either: you are logged into a machine on your campus network (excluding internal private networks); or you are remotely connected to your campus network through a Virtual Private Network (VPN), your campus provides remote access via VPN and allows internet access to the ICPSR through this connection; or your campus provides a proxy server for this purpose. Please inquire with your local network administrator or computer help-desk concerning VPN or proxy access. We'll attempt to answer your questions about which alternative applies to your situation.
Proxy server may prevent downloads of large data sets. Downloading large data sets through the ICPSR Direct service may fail if they are sufficiently large (over 30 megabytes) due to limitations of the Graduate Center's proxy server, which performs a virus scan of each scans file accessed through the web. The workaround for this problem is to configure your browser connection settings not to use the proxy server.
When requesting assistance, tell us whether you were accessing data from off campus, or on campus. Try to include as much technical detail as you can, so that we can better assist you.

Ordering Data Sets
Some data sets are available on CD or other off-line media. Requests for these must go through the CUNY Graduate Center (the CUNY Federation Hub).

ICPSR Summer Program in Quantitative Methods of Social Research
Each summer, the Graduate Center allocates, to students and faculty from the CUNY member institutions, a stipend for travel to the ICPSR Summer Program in Quantitative Methods of Social Research , which is held in Ann Arbor Michigan, and other locations. In the summer of 2004, a total of $2500 was allocated to five Summer Program participants from the CUNY Federation. We thank the ICPSR Summer Program Director, Henry Heitowit, for his assistance. In 2005, there were three participants from CUNY.

Procedure for obtaining the ICPSR Summer Program travel stipend
If you are a Ph.D. student or faculty at one of the CUNY campuses (currently, every campus is a CUNY Federation member institution) and you would like to receive a portion of the Summer Program travel stipend, contact the Assistant Director for Research Computing. The deadline to apply for the travel stipend for the 2007 ICPSR Summer Program in Quantitative Methods of Social Research is Monday, May 14th, 2007. Please include your home campus, your Ph.D. program and a valid email address.

That's all there is to it--we'll add your name to the list. Note: you must register with the ICPSR Summer Program in time to receive the travel stipend. If you do not register in time (usually the last Friday of April), the ICPSR will notify us and ask if we would like to increase the allocation to the other participants. If we hear from the ICPSR that you did not attend (which can happen if you asked to be considered for the stipend but you did not register), we'll attempt to contact you; if you do not attend, we will ask the ICPSR to reallocate your portion of the stipend.

More on applying to the ICPSR Summer Program
You should register online. Completed applications should reach the Summer Program by Friday, April 27, 2007. There are a few exceptions: see the ICPSR applications and admissions procedures for further details.

icpsr-l email list
The Graduate Center hosts an email list (icpsr-l@gc.listserv.cuny.edu) for ICPSR related announcements. CUNY Federation Official Representatives are added to the list as a matter of policy; the list is also open to interested CUNY faculty and students.

Graduate Center faculty and students who wish to access ICPSR data sets or who would like further information should contact Florian Lengyel, Assistant Director for Research Computing and the ICPSR Official Representative to the Graduate Center and the CUNY Federation at flengyel@gc.cuny.edu.