Digital Resources for Mental Health Professionals: Data Organisation (Part 2)
This is part 2 of a series on data organisation. Which is part of a multi-series of posts on digital resources for mental health professionals.
File Names
Naming files in a consistent and logical way can help you stay organised. You should:
- avoid relying on your memory,
- be able to preserve your ability to recognise your files years from now.
First I would like to introduce you to the ISO date format. This is a way of writing the date in a way that makes computers sort your files from oldest to newest automatically. This blog post explains it in more detail.
I personally try to stick with the following system:
YYYY-MM-DD_TYPE_description-of-content_AUTHOR_version.ext- YYYY-MM-DD: The date in ISO format.
- TYPE: This is the type of file from your point of view not the point of view of the computer. From the computer point of a view PDF file is a type of file but for me it may contain a presentation, research article or a legal document.
- Description-of-content: This is the main description of the contents of that file.
- AUTHOR: Author initials. I only use this if the file is part of a project with other collaborators.
- version: To keep track of changes or revert to earlier edits.
- .ext: the file type extension such .txt, .pdf, etc..
- Example:
2024-03-01_PRESENTATION_How-to-name-your-files_MHO_v03.pdf
Final tip: Try to left pad numbers in filenames with zeros.
- Add zeros on the left side of your numbers like 01, 02, and 10 as they will be sorted in numerical order instead of 1, 10, 2. Computers are weird.
Check out relevant links tagged with data-organisation in my bookmarks
This post is part of a challenge to write 150 blog posts of 150 words each this year. This is post 18 out of 150.