Data: Home

This guide will provide a variety of resources, tools, and approaches to handling data in its many forms, formats, and manifestations.

The various Tabs will address discovering data (both free and for a fee), manipulating data for analysis and presentation, and preserving data to ensure long-term access and to provide acceptable levels of stewardship.

The site will provide practical information, examples of current explorations, and developing guidelines and best practices.

Be sure to monitor the following sites in order to remain aware of the most current practices and developments:

• The Digital Curation Centre (DCC) assists higher education research institutions with the issues of digital curation. The DCC provides very helpful guidelines such as How-To-Guides and Case Studies.

                               The key concerns they address are categorized as ...

• Conceptualize: Consider what digital material you will be creating and develop storage options. Take into account websites, publications, email, among other types of digital output.
• Create: Produce digital material and attach all relevant metadata, typically the more metadata the more accessible the information.
• Access and use: Determine the level of accessibility for the range of digital material created. Some material may be accessible only by password and other material may be freely accessible to the public.
• Appraise and select: Consult the mission statement of the institution or private collection and determine what digital data is relevant. There may also be legal guidelines in place that will guide the decision process for a particular collection.
• Dispose: Discard any digital material that is not deemed necessary to the institution.
  Ingest: Send digital material to the predetermined storage solution. This may be an archive, repository or other facility.
• Preservation action: Employ measures to maintain the integrity of the digital material.
• Reappraise: Reevaluate material to ensure that is it still relevant and is true to its original form.
• Store: Secure data within the predetermined storage facility.
• Access and reuse: Routinely check that material is still accessible for the intended audience and that the material has not been compromised through multiple uses.
• Transform: If desirable or necessary the material may be transferred into a different digital format.

• For a good overview of the library perspective, see the Wikipedia entry on Digital preservation.