| Plan | Deciding what data will be collected, which methods will be used, and how data will be preserved. The actual gathering of data. |
| Collect |
The actual gathering of data. |
| Assure | Ensuring that data collected does not contain errors and is high-quality. |
| Describe | Creating detailed description of the data set, so others can find the data, understand the context, and reuse (with citation). |
| Preserve | Process to ensure long-term retention by maintaining its accessibility, authenticity, and longevity. |
| Discover | Look for data that might be valuable for your own study or project. |
| Integrate | Merging data from different sources to create a bigger dataset. |
| Analyze | Look at data to determine if it leads to conclusions that can be acted upon. |
These definitions are very generic and broad, but they do help to draw a through line between the broader data world and the library-specific world. All libraries collect data to help inform practice. How can we determine what is useful information and what pushes too far?