Marcus’ Takeaway From This Term’s Work

Assorted books of varying colors on a bookshelf

After working on the digital project translation this term, I have a lot of things that are beneficial for my future works and life. One thing I consider the most important takeaway from this term’s project is data management.

Data management is a critical skill for everyone. It’s more than just organizing things to make them look pretty, but rather to use logical thinking skills to arrange things in specific orders to assist the further flow of work.

My project this term was to translate an Omeka website to a WordPress site. This project involved lots of data extraction and collection. Essentially, with the large quantity of data, it’s crucial to stay organized. However, to ensure the organization of all data extracted and collected from the original site, knowing how to organize the information with data management skills was an essential part of this project.

Specifically, during the process of my digital project translation, I extracted and collected data that contains images, text, coordinates, etc. Before having a specific data management plan, it’s hard to imagine how to locate all the files I collected from the original site. Instead of jumping to work on digital translation, I did a data management consultation to find out the most logical way to organize the data.

After analyzing the nature of my project, I came up with a file flow map, folder structures, file naming system, detailed README. With the help of the comprehensive data management plan, I was able to start to collect data and manage it with my data management system.

With all that being said, data management has been very crucial for me to stay on track for my project this term. Beyond the digital translation project I completed this term, I believe data management can also be applied to many other areas to help me become a successful student at the University of Oregon. Here are ways that data management can apply to my daily practice as a UO student:

Writing a research paper

Writing a research paper can be frustrating when you need to consult a large number of sources. You can easily get lost when you don’t have a data management plan to keep tracking on the sources you referred for your research. Therefore, building a data management plan for your research plan is a good idea to keep pieces of information together without losing any critical sources.

Organize course material

There are often tons of course materials that we receive from each class every term. It could be PDFs of textbooks, assignment instructions, syllabi, etc. These course materials can quickly pile up on the computer’s desktop and download folder if we don’t organize them carefully. Hence, building a data management plan for all the course material can help you locate all the course materials faster and more efficiently. On the other hand, this can also save you lots of time from going back to Canvas relocate the material from the course, and repetitively downloading the same file.

Tracking on assignment

As a student, we turn in tons of assignments every term, whether it’s an essay, research paper, or presentation slides. Having a data management plan for all the assignments can help us keep tracking on things we have completed. This can also prevent us from deleting any assignments accidentally.

With all mentioned above, the data management plan is not only for those who work on digital translation projects but also essential for students. Having this skill can ultimately make one more organized with all of his assets and become a more successful person both for academics and in professional works.

Image Credit: Colorful Bookcase by Maarten van den Heuvel

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