 Welcome to the Data Management video series from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries. I'm Kristen Briney. I'm the Data Services Librarian here at UWM. So whenever you have questions about data management, contact me. I would love to talk to you. In this video, I want to particularly talk to the researchers who have ever had trouble finding their files, either just trying to scan through them, can't figure out what's what, remember where you put that particular data, or if you have to refer to your notes, or if you have to heaven for it actually open up the file to see what's in there, you might actually benefit from something called a file naming convention. Now a file naming convention is a way to consistently and clearly name your files so that you can tell at a glance what's in there. So a file naming convention might suggest instead of naming your file mydata.csv, which doesn't really tell you much, it might suggest instead naming your file 2013, 10, 23, dash pike lake dash three. And that tells me just from the file name that this is from October 23rd, 2013, the samples from Pike Lake in the sample number three. And that file name tells me at a glance what's in there and can help me differentiate that file from other files that are related but might be different sample numbers, dates, or locations. So a file naming convention is going to really save you a lot of time when looking for files. How do you actually adopt one and use one in your research? So the first thing to do is figure out a group of files that need a file naming convention. You're looking for a group of related files that you can use a consistent scheme for and can be anywhere from three files to a thousand files, whatever you have. And you can have multiple groups that have multiple conventions. So whatever works best for you is what you should use. So once you figure it out, your group of files, try to figure out the three things that you need to know about those files to recognize what's in them just by a file name. And this can be anything from the date to where you collected the data from, who collected the data, the particular type of analysis you're doing. It could be a sample number or a sample ID, whatever you need for your data to know at a glance what that data is. So once you come up with your three things, you want to put them into kind of a template for your file name. And there are a couple of recommendations for making this template. The first is you want it to be clear, but you want it to be short. So try to stick to templates that are under 25 characters in length, because otherwise they get unwieldy and hard to work with. The second thing you want to think about is not using special characters in your file names. Things like punctuation shouldn't go in file names, because computers have a hard time dealing with those type of characters. This actually includes spaces. So some operating systems don't like spaces in file names. An example would be Linux. Linux doesn't really deal well with spaces. So it's better to avoid those and just use dashes and underscores instead. It'll just make it easier to port data across different platforms. The last recommendation I have is if you're using dates in file names. And that recommendation is to follow the dating convention ISO 8601. I know out off the top of my head because it's my favorite. It's wonderful for file naming conventions. So how it works is you have a four-digit year, a two-digit month, and a two-digit day. And when you do this and you use that date system, your dates become consistent. However, moreover, when you use that date system at the beginning of your file names, all of a sudden your files sort chronologically. It's really beautiful. It's something you use all the time. It's really wonderful and I recommend if you want to put dates in your file names, use ISO 8601, put those dates at the beginning, and you have a great way to sort your information. So those are the three recommendations I have in terms of how to actually create the name itself. So it really takes about 10 minutes to sit down, figure out what you need in your name for this group of files, and come up with a little system for how you're going to do it. After that, it's about making your naming routine. You're just getting the habit of using that system, and that habit will make you able to save time later when you need those files. I want to end this video by giving you an example of a final naming convention, and one that I use and one that might be really helpful for you. So most final naming conventions are really specific to the data that they describe. But the one I'm talking about that I use a lot is for journal articles. I have a lot of PDFs saved on my computer, and I go through them and I need to find something in particular quite frequently. So the way I name those files is the first author's last name, underscore the year, underscore the title, or a section of the title. Enough that's going to help me remember what that paper is about. And this is really a nice way to organize my files, my PDFs, so I can just scan through and say, oh, I need Aiken's paper. Here we are. No, it's the 2009 one. This is it because I recognize the title. So it's a really easy way to scan through all of your literature. And it's one that I hope you adopt. So that is an example of a final naming convention, one that you might use. For the rest of your data, take 10 minutes, sit down, figure out what's going to work for you, and do it consistently. It can really save you a lot of time later. So I want to end this video by also saying that whenever you create a final naming convention, it's a really good idea to write it down somewhere like your research notebook or in revie.txt file along with your digital files, or probably both. So that way you know, and your coworker, if they need to use your data, know how to actually look through your files and find things. So I hope you use final naming conventions in your research. I think they're really handy, and I think there's such a really small thing that can make a really big impact and help you manage your data better.