Funding for Agri-food Data Canada is provided in part by the Canada First Research Excellence Fund
To preserve or NOT to preserve data?
That is the question to ask – when it comes to historical research data. So – yes I found some of the original research data that was collected by OAC researchers back in 1877 – BUT… do we spend the time and resources into pulling it out of the PDFs and making it accessible to…
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Data Entry Rescue
Imagine this scenario. On her first field season as a principal investigator, a professor watched a graduate student realize—two weeks too late—that no one had recorded soil temperature at the sampling sites. The team had pH, moisture, GPS coordinates… but not the one variable that explained the anomaly in their results. A return trip wasn’t…
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Historical Research Data Management?
In my last post OAC and Historical Ag Data – has the 150 year old mystery been solved? I ended with a couple of highlighted statements made by the Wm. Johnston, who was the rector/president of OAC back in the early years (1874-1879): conduct experiments and publish the results lay his hands upon our results…
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OAC and Historical Ag Data – has the 150 year old mystery been solved?
Ah yes I’m on a roll with the historical data. Many of you have heard me ask “Where is the data?” If we have been conducting research or experiments for over 150 years here in Ontario – what do we have to show for it? As Data stewards – what happened? Where has that data…
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More lost data?
I’m sure by now you’ve heard of the AAFC news – seven research facilities closing with many job cuts. Research facilities with over a century of research, data, reports…. Oh you all know where I’m going with this!!! Yup! Where is all that data? Gone? Hidden? Maybe in some repository? I don’t know! What I…
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Repositories for Research Data
Generalist and Specialist Data Repositories Research data repositories can be described along two important dimensions: how broad or specialized their scope is, and where they sit in the research data lifecycle. Understanding these distinctions helps understand the technologies and repositories available for research data. Generalist Repositories Generalist repositories are designed to accept many different kinds…
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Let’s talk “Metadata”
You’ve seen this word thrown around a lot! Data about data. Data Documentation. Information about your data. So many different ways to define “metadata”. If you’ve been reading our blog posts – you know that we are STRONG advocates for data documentation!! I, personally, am a STRONG believer in metadata – without it – all…
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Research Activity Identifiers (RAiDs)
In Canada, national research data infrastructure is coordinated by the Digital Research Alliance of Canada (DRAC). The Alliance provides the digital tools and platforms that researchers depend on to manage data, perform advanced computing, and leverage research software. Supported by federal funding, DRAC works with partners across the country to expand access, improve security, and…
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How do we change the data culture? Or do we need to?
Happy New Year and welcome back to a whole new year of blog posts by ADC! A New Year is upon us and yet I’m still stuck questioning the value of data and how everyone else values data. I know I talked a bit about this last year in my What happened with the “old”…
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Happy Holidays!
Happy Holidays from the team at Agri-food Data Canada! See you in 2026 with a series of new blogposts! image created by AI
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