Data & Donuts

Data & Donuts is a special workshop series hosted by Research Data Services. Instructors from UT Libraries and partners from across campus share expert advice, resources, and tools that will help you take good care of your data throughout its lifecycle, from project conception to the long-term archive. 

Fridays at 3pm in PCL's Learning Commons. 

(yes, there will be donuts!)

9/13

Managing Research Data: a Guide to Good Practice

Jessica Trelogan

Dealing with the mountains of digital data that accumulate in the course of a research project can seem like a daunting process, especially if your work is collaborative or stretches over several years. Adopting a few key good habits early on can save you huge amounts of time, money, and frustration searching for things and recovering lost files. This workshop will provide a general introduction to core data management concepts, practical tips for things like backups and file formats, and a wealth of information about tools and resources available to UT faculty, staff, and students.

Download slides here. 

9/20

Intro to the Texas Advanced Computing Center

Charlie Dey

Did you know UT’s Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) is home to some of the world’s most powerful computing resources? And that those resources are available for YOU? TACC's staff work with hundreds of researchers every day--across all disciplines--to enable computational research and aid discovery. They help researchers visualize results, manage data, and preserve it for the long term. This one-hour workshop will provide a brief overview of TACC’s high performance computing, visualization, and storage resources, and will walk you through how to request an allocation. No advanced computing skills required.

9/27

Data Clean-up with OpenRefine

Jessica Trelogan

OpenRefine is a powerful, free, and easy-to-use tool that’s perfect for sifting through, cleaning up, and transforming datasets--tedious yet critical tasks for data analysis and sharing. In this hands-on workshop, you will learn how to leverage OpenRefine’s point-and-click interface and intuitive scripting language for basic data exploration tasks and bulk transformations. No prior knowledge necessary.

Slides are here.

Exercise is here.

10/4

An intro to the Information Security Office and the many IT threats on campus

Cam Beasley, UT Austin Chief Information Security Officer

 October is National Cybersecurity Awareness Month (https://staysafeonline.org/ncsam/).

The UT Austin Chief Information Security Officer will provide an overview of the work the Information Security Office (https://security.utexas.edu/) does to serve UT Austin and entities across the planet.  The discussion will include an overview of the threats that exist on campus; how researchers can protect themselves and their data; and highlight cybersecurity resources that are available to keep you safe.

10/11

R for data analysis and visualization

Emily Beagle

This workshop will provide an introduction into the use of R and the RStudio integrated development environment for basic data analysis and visualization. Importing, manipulating, and visualizing tabular data in R will be discussed in addition to demonstrations of common cases where reproducible data analysis in R might be beneficial. Laptops with RStudio will be available so that you can follow along. No previous R experience is required.

Lecture slides are here.

Code available here.

10/18

Introduction to GIS and Geospatial Data

Michael Shensky

This workshop will provide an explanation of key geospatial terms and concepts and an introduction to geographic information system (GIS) software for visualizing, analyzing, storing, processing, and managing geospatial data. By the end of this session you should have the core knowledge required to start working effectively with geospatial datasets.

Lecture slides are here.