In light of more professional focus on data sharing expectations, some attention has been directed to historic, or legacy, data - leading to questions about how to best preserve and make this data accessible. Historic data in a variety of formats can be found in labs, archives, and offices. Even though not all data can be preserved for all time, this lack of cohesive understanding of what might be lost is unsettling. This becomes more timely as retirements increase from researchers who worked before sharing machine-readable data was commonplace. Researchers have used historic data in a variety of ways, including to repeat a survey or experiment, combine previously collected data into ongoing work, to study changes over time, and to inform future research plans. Librarians possess research data management skills to help researchers manage their historic data, including analog data, and in this workshop participants will learn how to critically review historic datasets (both analog and born-digital), how to create adequate metadata to improve discovery and reuse, and what options are available to preserve it for the long-term.

Registration will open Jan 20, 2025.

Contact: education@rdapassociation.org