This guide covers the basics and best practices for data management for individuals who are new to the research and data-collecting process.

4800 distinct file extensions!!!! Good explanation of why/how.

This worksheet walks researchers through the process of creating a file naming convention for a group of files. This process includes: choosing metadata, encoding and ordering the metadata, adding version information, and properly formatting the file names. Two versions of the worksheet are available: a Caltech Library branded version and a generic editable version.

The Oxford Common File Layout describes a shared approach to filesystem layouts for institutional and preservation repositories, providing recommendations for how digital repository systems should structure and store files on disk or in object stores. The authors represent institutions where digital preservation practices have been established and proven over time or where significant work has been done to flesh out digital preservation practices. A community of practitioners is surfacing and is assessing successful preservation approaches designed to address a spectrum of use cases. With this context as a background, the Oxford Common File Layout (OCFL) will be described as the culmination of over two decades of experience with existing standards and practices.

The theory and practice of securing file upload form handlers. Our examples are in PHP, but many of the filesystem security concepts here are language agnostic.

A blog about Digital Preservation, digital curation, long term access.

This paper identifies organizational challenges faced by Social Science and Humanities (SSH) scholars when dealing with digital data and media, and suggests improved file naming practices in order to maximize organization, making files easier to find, more useable, and more easily shared. We argue that such skills are not formally discussed in the literature and therefore many scholars do not recognize the problem until they cannot locate a specific file or are sharing files with colleagues. We asked SSH scholars to share their file naming strategies (or lack thereof ) and we use these narrative anecdotes to discuss common problems and suggest possible solutions for their general file naming needs.

The company responsible for tabulating results for three Essex County municipalities is providing some insight into why there was a major delay in providing the outcomes.

A filenaming screwup hoses the entire analysis, resulting in a paper retraction.

This short, straightforward video is part four of a four-part tutorial on file naming. It talks about some best practices for naming digital files. This video, designed for a general audience, is part of the State Library of North Carolina's "Inform U" series.

The State Library of North Carolina is part of the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources.