It’s me again!  Yup back to that historical data topic too!  I didn’t want to leave everyone wondering what I did with my old data – so I thought I’d take you on a tour of my research data adventures and what has happened to all that data.

BSc(Agr) 4th year project data – 1987-1988

Let’s start with my BSc(Agr) data – that image you saw in my last post  was indeed part of my 4th year project and a small piece of a provincial (Nova Scotia) mink breeding project: “Estimation of genetic parameters in mink for commercially important traits”.  The data was collected over 2 years and YES it is was collected by hand and YES I have it my binder (here in my office).  Side note: if you have ever worked with mink – it can take days to smell human after working with them 🙂   Now some of you may be thinking – hang on – breeding project – data in hand – um…  how were the farms able to make breeding decisions if I had the data?  Did they get a copy of the data?

Remember we are talking 40 years ago – and YES every piece of data that we collected – IF it was relevant for any farm decisions, was photocopied and later entered into a farm management system.  So, no management data was lost!  However, I took bone diameter measurements, length measures, weights at regular intervals, and many more measures – that frankly were NOT necessary or of interest to management of the animals at that time.  Now that data – to me – is valuable!!  So – what did I do with it?  A few years ago – during some down time – I transcribed it and now I have a series of Excel files with the data.  Next question would be – where is the data?   Another topic for next blog post 😉

MSc project data – 1989-1990

Moving onto my MSc data – “Estimation of swine carcass composition by video image analysis” (https://bac-lac.on.worldcat.org/oclc/27849855?lang=en).   Hang on to your hats for this!!

And you thought handwritten data was bad!  Here are all the printouts of my MSc thesis data and hand drawn acetate tracings from a variety of pork cuts!  Now what?  Remember I keep bringing us back to this concept of historical data.  Well, this is to show you that historical data comes in many different formats.  Does this have value?  Should I do something with this?

Well –  you should all know the answer by now :). Yes, a couple of years ago I transcribed the raw data sheets into Excel files.  But, those tracings – they’re just hanging around for the moment.  I just cannot get myself to throw them out – maybe some day I’ll figure out what to do with them.  If you have any suggestions – I would LOVE to hear from you.

Also note, that the manager of the swine unit at that time, kept his own records for management and breeding purposes – this data was only for research purposes.

PhD project data – 1995-1997

So up until now – it took work but I was able to transcribe and re-use my BSc(Agr) and MSc research data.  Now the really fun part.  Here are another couple of pictures that might take some of you back.

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Yup!  My whole PhD data was either on these lovely 3.5″ diskettes or on a central server – which is now defunct!  Now we might excited and think – hey it’s digital!   No need to transcribe!  BUT and that’s a VERY LOUD

BUT

These diskettes are 30 years old!  Yes I bought a USB disk drive and when I went through these only 3 were readable!   and the data on them were in a format that I can no longer read without investing a LOT of time and potentially money!

Now the really sad part – these data were again part of a large rotational breeding program.  The manager also kept his own records – but there was SO much valuable data, especially the meat quality side of my trials that were not kept and lost!  To this day, I am aware that there were years of data from this larger beef trial that were not kept.  It’s really hard to see and know that has happened!

Lessons learned?

Have we really learned anything?  For me, personally, these 3 studies, have instilled my desire to save research data – but I have come to realize that not everyone feels the same way.  That’s ok!  Each of us, needs to consider if there is an impact to losing that OLD or historical data.  For my 3 studies, the mink one – the farm managers kept what they needed and the extra measures I was taking would not have impacted the breeding decisions or the industry – so – ok we can let that data die.  It’s a great resource for teaching statistics though.

My MSc data – again – I feel that it followed a similar pattern than my BSc(Agr) trials.  Although, from a statistical point of view – there are a few great studies that someone could do with this data – so who knows if that will happen or not.

Now my PhD data – that one really stings!  Working with the same Research Centre today yes 30 years later!  I wish we had a bigger push to save that data.  Believe me – we tried – there are a few of us around today that still laugh at the trials and tribulations of creating and resurrecting the Elora Beef Database – but we just haven’t gotten there yet – and I personally am aware of a lot of data that will never be available.

So I ask you – is YOUR research data worth saving?  What are your research data adventures?   Where will it leave your data?

I’ve been talking about data ownership in a few different ways and I have also been digging into these wonderful historical data sources.  BUT! Where do we draw the line?  Let’s be honest that’s another really tough question to answer.

I have proclaimed many times, to many different people/audiences, and in different fora – that I LOVE my historical data!  I’ve asked the question to many – OAC is 151 years old now and we’ve been doing research for all those years – Where is all that data?  Gone?  Hidden?  In someone’s basement?

Let me ask you this now…  That historical data may be gone – but was there any value to it?  Should we go out, find it, and make it accessible?  Must ALL data be FAIR??  How does one decide?

I have NO clear answers to any of these questions – but I would love for you all to think about them.   Is there truly any value to the data I collected during my BSc(Agr) degree?  That was (Oh my! I’m going to say it) 39 years ago!!!  Yes I still have the binder with all the rawdata – but should I do something with it?  Should I make it FAIR?

How do we determine if there is value?  What do we keep and what do we throw away?

These are questions that archivists face everyday – but as a researcher – what do you think?  Is the data you collected 10, 15, 20, 40 years ago have value?  Should we make it FAIR???

I think you all know how I feel – if I had a magic wand – I would find and make all of our research data FAIR – doesn’t matter the age!  For me, in the research context all data has value 🙂

I’ve been trying really hard to – as they say – “Stay in my lane” for these data ownership conversations.  Sticking to the research data front as that is my comfort zone and that’s the world I live and play in.  However, the topic of data ownership goes well beyond research data.  Today, I want to take you on a little journey of historical data and that nasty topic of data ownership.

In one of my previous posts Data Ownership – another quandary to consider… I talked about finding a really cool source of information or data, from the 1940-50 – a fictional situation in that post.  But, I’ll be truthful here – it’s a situation based in reality.   Here at the University of Guelph, our researchers have been conducting research for decades – heck it’s 151 years for our Ontario Agricultural College researchers and 103 years for our Ontario Veterinary College researchers.  That’s a LOT of very interesting research outputs and potentially a lot of fabulous data.  But we know the reality when it comes to data as we see and use it today – check out Historical Data – Where is it?  However, we do have a TON and I mean a TON of research reports that date back to the 1950s – that contain data!  This is where the data archivist in me screams:  Let it out!!!

So let’s talk about our options here.  I’ll use a real example – the Ontario Forage Crops Committee (OFCC) supported and conducted forage crop trials from the early 1950s and published results in an annual report.  These reports have since been scanned, archived, and are available online at their new home under the Ontario Forage Council, since the OFCC no longer exists and has been retired for almost 10 years.   Now these reports contain wonderful data and could show you trends in yields, in the crops used/tested across the years, and the changes in management.  However….  if you want to see these trends – well 60 PDFs here I come!   One of our stakeholders asked whether we could pull the data out of the PDFs and make it usable – oh did I hear you say FAIR???   I jumped on that bandwagon without a second thought and put together a project to extract the data and create a data portal for it.

Can anyone see what I did NOT do??   I got excited! and I LOVE historical data – so yes VERY excited!   BUT…  that little question popped up – Who owns the data?   Do I have the RIGHTS to pull this data out from one representation, create another, and make it available to the world???   Ugly, ugly questions!  I mulled these over for quite some time and convinced myself that since the reports were out in the open, I could do whatever I wanted as long as I cited them – right?  Hmm..  I knew as I was convincing myself that it wasn’t quite right!  Because?  I do NOT own that data or those reports!

Are we extracting the data and creating a portal?   You better believe we are!  How am I justifying this?  I went to the holders or owners of these reports and asked for permission.  Easy as that!  Now this is a great example of accessing historical information  – but I’ll close this post with a more challenging one – one that I am itching to do but will need to work through a few more things – such as copyright.

Back to historical data sources.   Has anyone heard of “The Monthly Bulletin of Agricultural Statistics” published by Dominion of Canada Department of Trade and Commerce Census and Statistics Office?   Oh my – now this is a true treasure trove of data – monthly data such as, Area, Yield, Quality and Value of principal Field Crops In Canada, by province going back to 1916!!!!  This was brought to my attention by a former MSc student from our FARE department who is now doing a PhD in the US and was looking for this data to use in this study.  Oh I would LOVE to pull this data out and make it available to our community.  BUT just BUT – there is a lot to discuss here in regards to ownership and rights.

If you have thoughts and recommendations – or would like to help with this project – please reach out!  I’ll chat about a few of the challenges I forsee next time…

image created by AI