W08 - Standardizing data to Darwin Core using R: A hands-on workshop with lessons learned from the TrIAS project

Unsolicited contributions considered? No

Abstract

Got data you want to publish as Darwin Core? Want to communicate with the collection manager or the world on how you mapped that one particular field? Fed up with manually cleaning data each time you get an update? Is version control a new concept for you? If you answered yes to these questions, look no further and join our workshop on Standardizing data to Darwin Core using R! We will share the insights and experience we have acquired so far from the TrIAS project (Tracking Invasive Alien Species, http://trias-project.be). The goal of this hands-on workshop is to teach you basic data management, code versioning and automated data transformation. Not because the funding agency demands it, but because future-you will thank you. You will explore the world of GitHub – a platform for hosting, sharing and versioning code – and learn how to setup a repository for data transformation and use the platform to ask for feedback. We will teach you how to read, explore, map and export data to Darwin Core using the open source software language R. You will learn how to document and communicate your mapping clearly and efficiently using RMarkdown, and how to rerun a mapping when new data comes in. Whether you are a novice wanting to work efficiently or seasoned data publisher eager to learn to use new tools, this workshop will be an opportunity to improve your knowledge and encourage you to use R and GitHub as essential tools for data publication. This is a hands-on workshop limited to 20 participants., Bring your laptop with RStudio (https://www.rstudio.com/products/rstudio/#Desktop, open source edition) and GitHub Desktop (https://desktop.github.com/) installed. This workshop is fairly technical and requires base-level knowledge of programming and Darwin Core: if this makes you hesitate to attend, just contact us and we will see if we can meet your needs.