Introduction to r esearch data management - a humanities case study

1. Introduction to research data management- a humanities case study Slides provided by DaMaRO Project, University of Oxford

2. The researcher • Helen Redgrave, a doctoral student in the Department of History • Explored the emotional experience of ageing in mid 20th century Britain • Looked particularly at the interactions of social researchers with research subjects • Re-analysed historic social research data from four social research projects conducted between 1937 and 1965

3. The dataset • Four major datasets, comprising interview summaries, field notes, personal observations, questionnaires, photographs, etc. • Some material accessed by visiting archives • Some available for download from UK Data Archive and the Mass Observation Online database • A total of 749 files of research data, mostly in PDF format

4. Storage and back-up strategy • Working data stored on personal laptop • Daily back-ups made to external hard drive • Weekly back-ups made using University of Oxford’s HFS back-up service • Proved invaluable when laptop crashed – allowed data to be retrieved easily • Researcher would also have like to put a copy on Dropbox, but the dataset was too large

5. File naming strategies – examples • Order by date: 1955-04-12_notes_MassObs.docx 1955-04-12_questionnaire_MassObs.pdf 1963-12-15_notes_Gorer.docx 1963-12-15_questionnaire_Gorer.pdf • Order by subject: Gorer_notes_1963-12-15.docx Gorer_questionnaire_1963-12-15.pdf MassObs_notes_1955-04-12.docx MassObs_questionnaire_1955-04-12.pdf • Order by type: Notes_Gorer_1963-12-15.docx Notes_MassObs_1955-04-12.docx Questionnaire_Gorer_1963-12-15.pdf Questionnaire_MassObs_1955-04-12.pdf • Forced order with numbering: 01_MassObs_questionnaire_1955-04-12.pdf 02_MassObs_notes_1955-04-12.docx 03_Gorer_questionnaire_1963-12-15.pdf 04_Gorer_notes_1963-12-15.docx

6. File naming strategies In retrospect I am not very happy with the method I used for naming files. The biggest problem was with the newspaper articles I downloaded… I named the files only based on the topic of the article, without mentioning the name of the periodical and the year of publication, which would have been very useful later, when I began writing the thesis. – Doctoral student researching communication history

7. Metadata – data about data • A formal, structured description of a dataset • Used by archives to create catalogue records

8. Data preservation and sharing plan • As the researcher was working with pre-existing datasets, she did not own the rights – so was not able to publish the data used • However, the data is already publicly available via the archives she obtained the material from • Hence in this case, further use of the data could be facilitated by pointing other researchers to the material (e.g. by references in publications)

9. Rights and re-use • This slideshow is part of a series of research data management training resources prepared by the DaMaRO Project at the University of Oxford • It is based on information about real research projects provided by the academics who worked on them – though names have been changed, and case studies may have been edited, amplified, or combined • The slideshow is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike License • Within the terms of this licence, we actively encourage sharing, adaptation, and re-use of this material