Protect your research files -- make a plan to keep them for the whole life of your research with digital archiving. Digital archiving is important to organize, manage, and preserve your essential digital documents, data, and other information. The longer the timeframe, the more important it is to plan in advance to preserve your digital documents and data for the long haul. Theses and dissertations need longer planning than semester papers, and are also critical resources. Critical resources with long timeframes need extra planning for preservation. A personal preservation plan can help us to start collecting essential documents as we do our coursework before the thesis, keep those documents available and undamaged 

In this session, we will talk about strategies to organize and preserve your most important research information, with a special emphasis on the thesis and dissertation process. We will talk to attendees about assessing their needs and limitations for preserving research files. Specific thesis and dissertation topics will be covered, including participant privacy and protection of researchers’ entrepreneurial or artistic rights while being sure to backup and organize research.

Learning objectives

Attendees will learn basic strategies for successful management of born-digital content, including:

• Apply a 5-step cycle to assess data and document management needs

  • Understand the difference between a backup copy and an archive

  • Learn tips for organizing files such as naming conventions and versioning

• Incorporate specific planning issues with their research data:

  • Determine what VCU ITS security category their research data falls into

  • Apply the VCU data ownership policy to understand what data they can take with them after graduation

  • Learn the pros and cons of different types of storage

Presenter Information: Nina Exner and Margaret Kidd

Registration Information

Please register, so we can know many people to expect and can send you reminders with the URL to join us on the day of the event, and links to materials following the event. For more information or special accommodations, please contact Julie Arendt at jaarendt@vcu.edu.