The 6 Steps to Data Management

Enlightenmentor…

Can I Ever Fully Trust My Data?

In the beginning… Implemented EMu in 2006 Brought together 6 different databases Did not clean data first No central standards Resulting errors needed to be cleaned

…my journey began

Step 1: Innocence

Error: Parties duplicates Parties to clean up, merge, delete, parse Tony Williams party record Split to show that one was a Photographer

Error: Photographer migration

Complaints about strange photographers Bad data creates bad data Data entry errors? Punctuation interpreted incorrectly

Mrs. H.U. SilleckRoy Phelps Study Collection – Dolls?

Isabella Edenshaw?

Discovery Tony William’s party record had been stolen! By the question mark culprit:

Step 2: Hubris

Error: Standalone Parties Found standalone Party records Made no sense in context of database

Products

Adult Leisure

Corporation

Adult? Leisure? Adult Leisure?

Discovery 3 years later, reviewing legacy data for old loans Filling in missing information And I came across an old friend

With a Google search…

Step 3: Anger

Error: Photographers Happily replacing data like a good data manager But there were unanswered questions

Step 4: Depression

Error: the human kind Currently cataloguing Fragment collection Thousands of small pieces of objects Trying to fill out information

Legacy database mimicked storage But difficult to open What could EMu tell us?

Step 5: Acceptance

Error: Caption mismatches Publication information Came from several sources Number of errors

Analysis

Analysis

Step 6: Enlightenment

On your journey… Assumptions can lead us down the wrong path Legacy data is crucial, but not perfect Use your experience – what else can help? Document, document, document

Can I Ever Fully Trust My Data?

Kara LewisCollections Information Program ManagerNational Museum of the American Indianlewiskm@si.edu