A phrase that often comes up when data librarians speak about documentation is that “documentation is a love letter to your future self.” Basically, documentation is necessary because research data rarely speak for themselves and researchers forget details over time; … Continue reading
Category: documentation
Taking a Break: Some Stories of Documentation
I’ve been thinking a lot about documentation this month as I prepare to take 12 weeks of leave away from my job. The upside is that I’ve had 9 months to plan for this, but I will also say that … Continue reading →
Taking Better Notes
I’ve been talking a lot about documentation on this blog over the last few months but there is definitely one more issue I need to address before we move onto other topics: taking better notes. Taking better notes is really … Continue reading →
Templates
In my last post, I discussed my philosophy on documentation in that most researchers need to take better notes and augment them with a few key types of documentation, as needed. I’ve already blogged about a few of these special … Continue reading →
On Documentation
I just got back from my favorite conference on data, Research Data Access and Preservation (Storify highlights), and am processing all of the great things I learned about there. While some of these things will probably end up in future … Continue reading →
Data Dictionaries
Recently, I was reading through Christie Bahlai’s excellent roundup of spreadsheet best practices when I started thinking about documenting spreadsheets. You see, best practices say that spreadsheets should contain only one large data table with short variable names at the top … Continue reading →
README.txt
I mentioned README.txt files in my previous post and I wanted to expand on this concept because README’s are one of my favorite data management tools. The reason is that many of us keep notes separate from our digital data … Continue reading →
Oh! Vienna…notes from the CESSDA experts Seminar on Research Data Management
What follows are summaries of presentations and discussions. They are my summaries, so any misrepresentations, mistakes, slanderous accusations, lies, written lies, twisted lies etc. that follow are mine. All the presentations linked to in this blog post are available under a … Continue reading →
The five stages to data sharing: Acceptance
Applying the Kübler-Ross model[1] to researchers and data sharing, based on various attitudes and comments we have encountered over the years. Don’t take the presentation seriously, but take the content seriously. Part five in a series of…uh, five. 5. Acceptance … Continue reading →