Cambridge University Library Documentation Anna Collins Cambridge University Library

…but what else do we know? A picture of two women in a library…

And this is Miss Winifred Hill This is Miss Oppenheim The photo was taken in 1928… …in the inner Royal Commonwealth Society Library

Why create documentation? Make research materials: Understandable Findable and searchable Verifiable Re-usable

Why create documentation? Creating documentation might seem like a waste of time Good documentation will include a lot of information that might seem obvious

NASA and the metric mix-up Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Mars Climate Orbiter, 1999 Burned up in Mars’ atmosphere Flight system software written to calculate thruster performance in metric units (newtons) Course correction and thruster data entered using imperial units (pound-force)

What’s obvious now might not be in a few months, years, decades… Make sure you can understand your digital material later! Image: DSCN0428BB - Clay Tablets with Liner B Script by archer10 (Dennis) on flickr: Make research material understandable

Make research reproducible Detailing your methodology helps people understand your research better Explaining your collection strategies, search methods etc makes your work reproducible Conclusions can be verified Image by woodleywonderworks on flickr:

Material may be re- used by someone in a different discipline Provide context to minimise the risk of it being misunderstood/ misused Make material reusable

Documentation & Metadata Metadata are: Machine readable Written according to standards “A Mohammedan student in the library of the Higher College” © Royal Commonwealth Society Collection “I guess it makes sense for a robot to read an e- book [401]” by brianjmatis on flickr

Make material findable Comprehensive descriptive metadata allows relevant material to be discovered more easily Related materials (eg other files) can be located

Who created it, when and why Include: Description of the item Methodology Units of measurement References to related data What to include (I) description n. A set of characteristics by which something can be recognised M. Farinelli et al. (2012) PLoS ONE 7(3): e34047

What to include (II) CC Gavin Llewellyn /gavinjllewellyn/ / Provide technical information about the file (may be generated automatically) Define jargon, acronyms and code

Document your data as you go If you don’t, it may become impossible for you – or someone else – to understand and re-use data later on Question Mark Sign by Colin_K on flickr: / /

Creative Commons Licence The teaching materials are released under Creative Commons licence 2.0 BY-NC-SA. You are free to re-use, adapt, and build-upon the work for educational purposes. The material may not be used for commercial purposes outside of education. If the material is modified and further distributed it must be released under a similar Creative Commons licence.