When I was a practicing chemist, I wore many hats. One day I was a programmer, the next a plumber, and only sometimes was I actually a chemist. While I enjoyed the day-to-day variety, I found it hard to adapt to roles in which I had very little training. One such area was dealing with my research data.
As an undergraduate, I learned a little bit about keeping a laboratory notebook, but this wasn’t enough to prepare me for managing and organizing my data once I got to graduate school. Left on my own, I cobbled together a system that wasn’t very good and was absolutely no help to anyone else. I knew my system could be better but I didn’t have the knowledge to actually make it better.
I’ve learned a lot about dealing with data since then and I wish I could go back and share that information with my former self. Instead, I’m sharing that information with you.
My plan for this blog is to write about managing research data in the lab, in addition to discussing how data are becoming first class citizens in the world of research. There are a lot of exciting things going on around research data at the moment and I can’t wait to talk about them with you!
