File Naming in Digital Media Research: Examples from the Humanities and Social Sciences

Abstract

This paper identifies organizational challenges faced by Social Science and Humanities (SSH) scholars when dealing with digital data and media, and suggests improved file naming practices in order to maximize organization, making files easier to find, more useable, and more easily shared. We argue that such skills are not formally discussed in the literature and therefore many scholars do not recognize the problem until they cannot locate a specific file or are sharing files with colleagues. We asked SSH scholars to share their file naming strategies (or lack thereof) and we use these narrative anecdotes to discuss common problems and suggest possible solutions for their general file naming needs. IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE 1. This article focuses on the crucial but often-overlooked role, and significance, of file naming practices in digital media research, storage, and archiving in the social sciences and humanities (SSH). We offer practical file naming solutions that librarians can introduce to SSH colleagues and scholars. 2. Narratives provided by SSH scholars detail their file naming inconsistencies, which lead to confusion, loss, or error. Librarians can address these issues and support scholars who find file naming challenging or are seeking new strategies. 3. Librarians can implement our suggestions to help SSH scholars develop their own file naming protocols so they can better find, retrieve, and share their data. These protocols can also serve as a foundation for creating data management plans increasingly required for federally funded grants.

The ubiquitous digital file: A review of file management research

“…Another aspect to storing files and folders is how they are named, which has drawn attention in FM research as generating meaningful and descriptive names for files and folders helps users find and understand files (Crowder, Marion, & Reilly, 2015), but is also difficult, especially if trying to create names that are concise and unique. In studying file naming behaviour, users have been found to exhibit considerable creativity in file naming (Carroll, 1982), though patterns are identifiable: files are named to display the document they represent, their purpose, a project title, or a relevant creation date or deadline (Hicks et al, 2008), but may also contain characters to facilitate file sorting (W. Jones et al, 2015).…”

“…Storing creating, downloading, filing, naming, backing up files Barreau (1995), Capra (2009), Capra, Vardell, andBrennan (2014), Carroll (1982), Crowder, Marion, andReilly (2015), Dearman and Pierce (2008), Gonçalves and Jorge (2003), Henderson (2005), Henderson and Srinivasan ( 2009), Hicks, Dong, Palmer, andMcAlpine (2008), Huvila, Eriksen, Häusner, andJansson (2014), W. Jones, Bruce, and Dumais (2001), W. Jones et al (2015), W. Jones, Dumais, and Bruce (2002), Kaptelinin (1996), Kearns, Frey, Tomer, and Alman (2014), Khoo et al (2007), Kljun, Mariani, and Dix (2016), C. C. Marshall, Wobber, Ramasubramanian, and Terry (2012), C. Marshall and Tang (2012), Nardi, Anderson, and Erickson (1995), Ravasio, Schär, and Krueger (2004), Santosa and Wigdor (2013), Tang, Brubaker, and Marshall (2013), Organising creating subfolders, moving and deleting files and folders Bergman, Whittaker, Sanderson, Nachmias, and Ramamoorthy (2010), Berlin, Jeffries, O'Day, Paepcke, and Wharton (1993), Boardman and Sasse (2004), Chaudhry, Rehman, and Al-Sughair (2015), Gonçalves and Jorge (2003), Hardof-Jaffe, Hershkovitz, Abu-Kishk, Bergman, and Nachmias (2009b), Henderson (2005Henderson ( , 2011, Henderson and Srinivasan (2009), Hicks, Dong, Palmer, and McAlpine (2008...…”

“…;Capra et al (2014);Carroll (1982);Crowder et al (2015);Dearman and Pierce (2008);GonQalves and Jorge (2003);Henderson (2005);Henderson and Srinivasan (2009);Hicks et al (2008);Huvila et al (2014);Jones et al (2001);Jones et al (2002);Jones et al (2015);Kaptelinin (1996);Kearns et al (2014);Khoo et al (2007);Kljun et al (2016);; C Marshall and Tang (2012)Nardi et al (1995);Ravasio et al (2004);Santosa and Wigdor (2013);Tang et al (2013); OrganizingCreating subfolders, moving and deleting files and foldersBoardman and Sasse (2004); Bergman et al (2010); Berlin et al (1993); Chaudhry et al (2015); Henderson and Srinivasan (2009); Henderson (2011); Henderson and Srinivasan (2011); Hicks et al (2008); Kamaruddin et al (2006); Kamaruddin and Dix (2010); Kaptelinin (1996); Malone (1983); Oh (2012b,a, 2013); Oh and Belkin (2014); Oh (2017); Pare (2011); Trullemans and Signer (2014a); GonQalves and Jorge (2003); Hardof-Jaffe et al (2009b); Henderson (2005); Jones et al (2005); Ravasio et al (2004); Whitham and Cruickshank (2017); Zhang and Hu (2014) Retrieving Navigating, searching, tagging files and folders Barreau and Nardi (1995); Benn et al (2015); Bergman, Beyth-Marom, Nachmias, Gradovitch, and Whittaker (2008); Bergman, Gradovitch, et al (2013a, 2013b); Bergman, Tene-Rubinstein, and Shalom (2013); Bergman et al (2014); Cutrell (2006); Cutrell, Dumais, and Teevan (2006); Fitchett and Cockburn (2015); Jensen et al (2010); Jones et al (2014); Narayan and Olsson (2013); Nardi et al (1995); Ravasio et al (2004); Song and Ling (2011); Teevan et al (2004); Voit, Andrews, and Slany (2011); Voit et al (2012b) Sharing Sending files, negotiating storage, organization, retrieval in shared space Bergman et al (2014); Bergman et al (2018); Berlin et al (1993); Capra et al (2014); Copic Pucihar et al (2016); Dourish, Lamping, and Rodden (1999); M. L. Johnson et al (2009); Khan et al (2018); Mark and Prinz (1997); Massey, TenBrook, et al (2014); Tang et al (2013); A. Voida et al (2013); Wulf (1997); Zhang and Twidale (2012) JOURNAL OF THE ASSOCIATION FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY-January 2020 DOI: 10.1002/asi TenBrook, et al (2014) was that among participants using Windows, conscientiousness was positively correlated with the number of files kept on the desktop, but no such correlation existed for Mac users.…”

The scalability of different file‐sharing methods

“…For example, it is widely argued that larger collections with more files and folders lead to less successful retrieval (Bao, Herlocker, & Dietterich, 2006; Bergman, Tucker, Beyth‐Marom, Cutrell, & Whittaker, 2009; Berlin et al, 1993; Crowder, Marion, & Reilly, 2015; Jensen et al, 2010; E. Jones, Bruce, Klasnja, & Jones, 2008). However, in the GIM context, larger collections may have even more serious consequences for retrieval.…”

Factors hindering shared files retrieval

“…Prior research suggests several factors that could hinder retrieval. These factors relate to: collection size (Jensen et al , 2010; Bergman et al , 2009; Berlin et al , 1993; Bao et al , 2006; Crowder et al , 2015; Jones et al , 2008), file-related attributes such as versioning (Bergman et al , 2014, 2015; Karlson et al , 2011; Jensen et al , 2010; Jones, 2007; Kearns et al , 2014; Rasel and Ali, 2016; Bergman and Whittaker, 2016) and user workload (Hauck et al , 2008; Hockey and Earle, 2006). However, that prior work has not systematically examined and measured how these factors affect file retrieval.…”