Data management for the humanities: from data warehousing to legal and ethical implication

From nightmare to thrilling adventure: handling the data of a humanities projects can show both extremes. Avoiding these questions is usually not an option, given the guidelines for good scientific practice, also from funding organizations. In this course we discuss the basis of making this as hassle-free as possible, allowing you to focus on your DH research questions rather than on these formal requirements (fascinating as they are for us).

Research projects in the Humanities and in the Social Sciences that produce and use language-related data are facing many challenges: which data should be used for data-driven projects, which formats should be used, who will archive the data at the end of the project, how are the data found later for reuse and reproduction and is the researcher allowed to share the data with others? Is it ethical to publish the data?

This course will deal with all questions around data management for the humanities and social sciences:

1. Data management planning
2. Repository organization and depositing data
3. Metadata standards and creation
4. Citing and referring to resources
5. licensing and copyright
6. Deposition agreement and contracts
7. Legal and ethical issues

This workshop is planned as a two week class, though it is possible to only take one or the other week. The first week we will focus on topics 1-4, the second week will be reserved for 5-7.

Participants are encouraged to bring their own project ideas (even if they are for a thesis) using data and we will try to develop a data management plan. If the project is already finished, we could even go further and try to find a suitable location
for archiving the data.

For newly created data we will look at the licensing and other legal issues.

You will experience teachers who really enjoy data management and legal and ethical implications for research data in the humanities.

So be aware that we will have fun and find great ways for avoiding pitfalls of legal issues and data management: the earlier the start, the less painful. Join the ESU 2016 Award Winning Workshop (No. 1 at Workshop Slam). There will also be cookies (limited stock).