Post by Tiffany Grant PhD, Research Informationist based at Donald C. Harrison Health Sciences Library

Organizing Data

When you’re generating data at a rapid pace, it can be easy to label files with names that seem good at the time, but that will have very little meaning to you later. This practice may save time in the present, but it will ultimately lead to great frustration in the future when finding these exact files seem nearly impossible.

A good practice for data organization is to give your files meaningful, descriptive names, but avoiding long file names. Files names should allow you to identify a precise experiment from the name.

How meaningful are the following file names?

1. Test_data_2013
2. Project_Data
3. Design for project.doc
4. Lab_work_Eric
5. Second_test
6. Meeting Notes Oct 23

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Let’s kick off LOVE YOUR DATA week with KEEPING DATA SAFE.

First a sad story – in one of my first Top Ten Tips for Data Management workshops, I had a workshop participant who I thought was bored out of his skull. He had a glazed look in his eyes and kept shaking his head as if he was saying no, no, no. I approached him, though with some reservations after the workshop, and asked what he thought about the topic and my presentation. His words and I quote were “if only I had known this 6 months ago…I just lost my dissertation work and I am still getting over the shock”. Not bored, but in shock. He had lost 6 months’ worth of work. Sadly he is not the first. If only he and others had known about 3-2-1 or Here-Near and Far.

3-2-1 stands for

3 copies (1 primary copy and two backup copies of your data)

2 formats for storage (use a computer hard drive and an external hard drive)

1 remote copy (cloud storage or geographically separate from your other copies)

These three tips will help keep your data safe and protect your valuable time.

Here, Near and Far is another way of thinking about the same tips. Set up an automatic back up for your data to make it even easier.

At UC we have a few tools that can help you back up your data:

1) Use your Box account. You have 50 GB available to you. IT@UC also has other data solutions available.

2) You can track your work with the Open Science Framework developed by the Center for Open Science or use GitHub.

3) Attend a data management workshop offered by UC Libraries. We have several coming up particular a workshop called Managing Research Data from Generation to Preservation on April 19^th.

Fun Fact: Did you know we can still look at Darwin’s original notebooks through the Darwin Online project. Someone took extra special care for those files. Let’s do the same for your data.

Check out this fun video about data back-up and learn how the movie Toy Story 2 was almost lost, but was saved by the 3-2-1 rule.

Visit the Love your Data website for more tips to help keep your data safe. Follow the event on Twitter at #LYD16.