📄️ Data management planning
In the following sections we provide resources for helping you manage data more effectively. There are the same resources and processes we use to manage this project.
📄️ Curation tools
There are free tools available for curating data. Below are some of the tools we used to curate this project.
📄️ Data dictionaries
A data dictionary is usually the last thing on a researcher's mind when publishing data. Not only because there are few data collecting platforms that take data dictionaries into consideration as output for a data collection instrument, but they are not standardized. And the only reason you need a data dictionary is if you need someone else to understand your data. When you are beginning data collection, you are the creator of your data instrument, so you know what you are collecting. But when the data is finally retrieved from the instrument, do your variable names look like Q1, Q3, Q34? What do those names represent?
📄️ Jupyter notebooks
This is likely the best tool to have in your data curation toolbox. A Jupyter notebook is not only the visual eye candy for representing your metadata, but it provides you with the tools to download and work with much of the data. This is significant because we can run data analyses from within the notebook and save the results and notes from those analyses within a single file. The best thing about these notebooks is they are JSON formatted (you will notice we talk at great lengths about JSON in this guide). In this user guide we will provide you with examples and demonstrate the power of these notebooks.
📄️ Supercharging access to a data repository
Data repository searching
📄️ CURATE(D): Checklist for Data Curation
Suggested Citation//z.umn.edu/curate.
📄️ Curation log considerations
When developing a curation log, you need to consider the format and workflow for creating the log. If you rarely curate data, then a simple text file may provide all the logging you need. However, will you work from a template or simply start from scratch? Do you want to know the order your steps were taken along with a timestamp of when they were completed? These are some things to consider before starting your log.
📄️ Testing our technology
When beginning this project, we needed to consider the technologies used in the implementation of our processes. Patrick Gale is our technology expert and his experience with developing application integration processes led him to choose the tools outlined in our approach.
📄️ Data curation template
The following template is based on the CURATE(D) checklist from DCN.