Choosing Supported File Formats

Identify Your File Formats

tDAR supports a number of commonly used file types, but no repository supports all file types. Review the data you plan to submit and make a list of the file type (e.g. document, image, datasets, etc.), the program used to create each file (e.g. Microsoft Word, Adobe Illustrator), and especially the file extension (i.e. usually the three to four letters at the end of the file name: surveyReport .doc, faunalData .xlsx).

Verify That tDAR Supports Your Formats

Table 1 contains information about which popular file formats tDAR supports. If your file type is not listed in the field “tDAR Supported File Types” then you will need to convert your files before submitting them to tDAR.

Converting Files         

File conversion tools can be found by searching the web using a phrase similar to “converting X file type to Y file type” where X is the file extension your data are in and Y is the file extension tDAR supports for that same resource type. 

Keep in mind that conversion tools may not translate your data perfectly. Be sure to compare the converted files to be sure they contain the same pertinent information as the original file.

Noting any file conversions in a resource’s “General Notes” metadata field is an excellent practice.

Table 1. tDAR Supported File Types 

Managing Security and Access

Redacting Confidential Data

tDAR automatically generalizes specific locations set using the website’s “Select Region” tool, but uploaders should be careful to review their resources to ensure that site locations and other sensitive information are redacted from all text, images or other fields where they might appear.

• For more information on redacting information, see Redaction.

Setting Access Permissions

Files can be marked as confidential, restricting access to only users the uploader specifies but allowing all users to see the associated metadata.

Embargoing Resources

Resources can be uploaded to tDAR with an embargo that keeps the resource private until a specified future date. Users can allows other specified users access to embargoed files before the embargo ends (i.e. such as when multiple researchers want to use tDAR to collaborate on a data set without releasing it publicly just yet).

• For more information on access permissions and embargoes, see the Restricting Access to Files.

Organizing Your Data

Before submitting your data to tDAR, organize your resources into groups based on some commonality. Useful organization strategies include grouping resources by:

• Archaeological projects (e.g. Big Bend River Survey, Excavation at 45WH30).
• Reports/Articles and related resources, such as datasets.

Collections

Collections are an ideal method for organizing resources in tDAR.  They can be stacked or nested to allow you to group and embed related projects, independent resources, and other collections.  Collections also simplify managing rights and the way that others can access your resources by enabling you to easily manage permissions on groups of resources.

Projects

Projects are the tDAR method for intentionally grouping resources together. Users can also group resources together temporarily by using tDAR’s search functions (i.e. to find all data sets with the word “Faunal” and from the period 200-1450 A.D.).

Projects are not necessarily analogous to archaeological excavations, but for discrete archaeological projects, it makes sense to group together excavation photos, site reports, level forms and artifact measurements under a tDAR Project named for the archaeological project.

The advantage of using a project to organize your resources is twofold:

Inheritance

Projects allow users to set general metadata (see “Metadata” below) at the project level. Resources that are grouped under a Project will “inherit” the Project-level metadata automatically, saving users from having to enter repetitious metadata at the Resource level. Resource level metadata can be customized for each resource, allowing more specific information to be used for individual files or resources.

For example, if all your resources deal with the period from 200-1450 A.D., you can set the Project “Temporal Coverage” field accordingly. Now every resource added to the project will be able to inherit the “Temporal Coverage” field from the Project, without needing to re-enter “200-1450 A.D.” for every resource.

For more information, see Inheriting Project Metadata

h3. Organization

Projects allow users to move from the Resource level and find other resources from the same project.

For example, a user reading the Kennewick Man Cultural Affiliation Report might want to also see the DNA testing results. Seeing that the report is grouped under the Project title: “The Archaeology of Kennewick Man,” upon clicking on the Project title, the user is able to view other associated resources such as letters from the U.S. Secretary of the Interior to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, radiocarbon dating results and -eureka!- the DNA testing results!

• See Creating or Editing a Project for detailed information on projects in tDAR.

Testing Your Plan

Pilot Ingest

After organizing your data, you may want to test your strategy with a small portion of your data to be sure that your plan will work as expected.

Choose a representative sample of the types of files you will be creating metadata for and uploading. Be sure to include at least one example of each file type.

Upload your sample files and create metadata for the resources. Test the search function to be sure that your resources appear when a user searches for something you include in your metadata.

Try searching, accessing, and downloading any resources you have marked as confidential or embargoed. Check downloaded files to be sure that redacted information cannot be found visually or by using a program’s text search functions.

If everything did not work properly, now is the time to revise your plan and organization strategy and try the pilot ingest again.

If everything works as expected, congratulations! You are ready to begin uploading your data into tDAR, and will have saved yourself a lot of angst and frustration by preparing properly.