Digital Humanities: Data collection & storage

Data collection and storage refers to acquiring and keeping data in a systematic way in response to a given purpose, research question or hypothesis.

Activities related to data collection and storage:

• Capture data in the field
• Conduct surveys

• Establish clear data design principles (e.g. techniques for sampling data to create a representative and balanced dataset)

Tools:

• ExSite9
  • An open-source cross-platform tool for creating descriptions of files created during fieldwork.
  • Used by researcher Nick Thieberger to collect samples of language data, deposited in the PARADISEC collection.
• REDCap
  • A mature, secure web application for building online surveys.
  • Used to collect data on geolocation for live mapping accessibility: Hamraie, Aimi. "Mapping Access: Digital Humanities, Disability Justice, and Sociospatial Practice." American Quarterly, vol. 70 no. 3, 2018, pp. 455-482. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/aq.2018.0031
• DocNow
  • Appraise Twitter for building archival and research collections.
  • Used to collect Tweet ID datasets on the Ferguson protests, Black Lives Matter, and Australian values, among others.
• Webrecorder
  • Webrecorder is a web archiving service anyone can use for free to save web pages. Making a capture is as easy as browsing a page like you normally would. Webrecorder automatically archives the page, along with any additional content triggered by interactions
  • Used by Dragan Espenschied, the Rhizome preservation director, to archive the 2017 Seven on Seven net art exhibition from the New Museum.

• Data Documentation Initiative (DDI)
  • International standard for describing the data produced by surveys and other observational methods in the social, behavioural, economic, and health sciences. DDI is a free standard that can document and manage different stages in the research data lifecycle, such as conceptualization, collection, processing, distribution, discovery, and archiving

• FAIMS Project
  • The Field Acquired Information Management Systems (FAIMS) Project builds tools for digital data collection in the field, including FAIMS Mobile, an app that allows people to collect information using their personal Android devices in many settings including remote locations with no internet access.
• Emapic
  • Emapic allows you to visualise and administer geolocalised surveys, demonstrating on a map any knowledge, opinion or feeling with the users geographical location.

Resources

Finding datasets

Finding theses

Archive research data 

Consultation

If you want to talk to someone about data collection and storage, contact the University's Research Data Consulting team at digital.research@sydney.edu.au.