Cancelled: Research Data Training Camp (March 23-26)

In order to align with York University’s policy to cancel or postpone all non-essential events that are not required as part of an academic program, the York University Libraries Research Data Training Camp originally scheduled to take place from March 23rd-26th, 2020 has been cancelled. York University Libraries will endeavour to reschedule this full workshop series as soon as possible. For updates on training camp programming or future workshop dates, please visit our website or our event calendar. Students or faculty needing research data management support for their projects are invited to visit our website here or to contact us at yul_rdm@yorku.ca to book an online consultation.

Collecting research data but not sure how to manage it? Want to learn more about the research computing tools that can help you better manage your research project?

York University Libraries is offering a free research data training camp workshop series for graduate students looking to learn the data management and research computing skills that can help them get more out of their research in less time. By getting hands-on experience with the different tools explored in the series, participants will walk away with a better sense of the data management options available to them through such sessions as: Managing Research Data in the Social Sciences, Managing Research Data in the Health Sciences, Online Privacy and Security Considerations for Researchers, Data Cleaning with Open Refine, Introduction to Analyzing and Visualizing Data with R, Tropy: Managing Your Research Images, Citation Management with Mendeley, and Zotero for Collaborative Research Projects.

Workshop Schedule

To register for individual sessions, please consult our calendar or use the registration links for each workshop provided below.

Managing Research Data in the Health Sciences (Postponed)
This workshop will discuss key themes, challenges, and considerations in research data management (RDM), including RDM planning, data organization, documentation, security, and data sharing and publishing options. Participants will learn about information, tools and resources to support effective RDM practices in health science research. Workshop participants are asked to fill out the following pre-survey to ensure the in-person session can be customized to meet specific health science researcher needs: https://forms.gle/a2DpYMbSCk14qHND9.

Managing Research Data in the Social Sciences (Postponed)
This workshop will discuss key themes, challenges, and considerations in research data management (RDM), including RDM planning, data organization, documentation, security, and data sharing and publishing options. Participants will learn about information, tools and resources to support effective RDM practices in social sciences research. Workshop participants are asked to fill out the following pre-survey to ensure the in-person session can be customized to meet specific social science researcher needs: https://forms.gle/a2DpYMbSCk14qHND9.

Zotero for Collaborative Research Projects (Postponed)
This workshop will help graduate students or research teams leverage Zotero, a free, open source citation management system, for their work, particularly if they are working as part of a collaborative research project.

Online Privacy and Security Considerations for Researchers (Postponed)
Get an overview of things to consider when your research intersects with issues of online privacy and security. After an overview of privacy issues and a self-assessment, we'll guide you through common research issues connected with privacy and security: using online or "cloud" services for file storage, ensuring a lost laptop doesn't mean compromised data, taking control of online tracking, managing and sharing all those passwords, and what to do when your work makes you an online harassment target. This is a privacy and security toolkit no researcher should be without! Although desktop computers will be available during the session, attendees are invited to bring a laptop or any other internet-connected device.

Tropy: Managing Your Research Images (Postponed)
This workshop will introduce participants to the free, open source desktop application Tropy to aid in the management of digital images. This workshop would be ideal for humanities and social science students conducting research in institutional archives.

Introduction to Analyzing and Visualizing Data with R (Postponed)
R is a programming language for statistical computing and data analysis that can help you query and explore data in a number of interesting ways. Through this introductory lesson, you’ll learn how to interact with R via RStudio and how to explore the structure and content of a data frame through a series of commands. You will also learn how to use the ggplot2 package from the R tidyverse to create meaningful and impactful graphics. Note: Desktop computers offering access to R and RStudio will be available to workshop participants. Those wishing to work with their own laptops during the session are asked to load the software in advance by following these instructions.

Citation Management with Mendeley (Postponed)
This session will offer a brief introduction to how Mendeley can help you manage your citation information, organize documents, make your own searchable library, cite as you write, and read and annotate PDFs. Note: Those wishing to work with their own laptops during the session are asked to load the software from https://www.mendeley.com/download-desktop/.

Data Cleaning with OpenRefine (Postponed)
OpenRefine is a standalone open source desktop application for data cleanup and transformation. The application works in tandem with csv and tsv formats, i.e. with traditional spreadsheets (Excel), to normalize, transform, parse, and fetch data from other web services. This ‘hands on’ session presents the primary features of OpenRefine, particularly faceting, filtering, clustering, as well as ‘built-in’ simple transformations. We will also introduce complex transformation functionality using the General Refine Expression Language (GREL), regex, and json. Note: We ask that you please come to the session having reviewed the prerequisites document listed here. Also, please note that you must bring your own laptop in order to be able to participate in this session.

Frequently Asked Questions

Will more research data training camps be offered in the future?

Yes! More details on future sessions during the 2020 fall semester will be released soon.

Have further questions about the training camp? Contact us at yul_rdm@yorku.ca.