Data, data everywhere, but little to use!

This edition of the column aims to expand the ideas presented in a poster of the same title exhibited at the IASSIST Conference held in April 2017 in Kansas, USA.

It explores the fact that data are constantly being generated daily; however, the use of these data is limited because of its unavailability to the general public in forms or formats they need.

Data are important to research because of their high information value, that is, value-added information that is critical for decision-making.

Data come in many forms — census, statistics, research results, figures, graphs, interview transcriptions, journal entries, etc.