Data user guides are designed to go beyond metadata and give data users a sense of the purpose for which the data was collected, the business processes, software, and applicable standards involved, suggested applications for the data (and how to use it), and other details that will help data users.
It’s our hope that data users will contribute to the knowledge base through data user guides. We also expect that data user group activities will also lead to the development of more and more user guides.
We’ve been developing and testing a framework for data user guides. Our first dataset specific user guides are now available for Allegheny County Property Assessment Data and City of Pittsburgh 311 data, and we released a broader guide for criminal justice, court, and corrections data in LibGuide format. As always, if you have any questions, suggestions or comments about documenting data or anything else, please let us know.
All of our data guides are collected here.