- University Libraries
- Research Guides
- Scholars' Collaborative
- Data Services
- Data Types & Formats
Data Services: Data Types & Formats
Types of Data
Every discipline has data in some form. The following is a sample list of types of data.
1. Weather measurements
2. Photographs
3. Results from experiments
4. Simulation data
5. Field notes
6. Images (e.g. brain scans)
7. Quantitative data (e.g. household survey data)
8. Historical documents
9. Physical objects: such as bones or blood samples
10. Digitized photos / born digital photos
11. Social media data: tweets
File Types
Consider long-term access to data when you choose which file type to use. You can help reduce the obscelence of your data files by using file types that are designed for long-term access. The following file types are preferrable over proprietary software-specfic file types:
A. Text Files
PDF/A
TXT
XML
RTF
Not: MS Word
B. Numerical Files
CSV
Tab Delimited
Not: MS Excel
C. Video Files
MPEG-4
Not: Quicktime
D. Image Files
TIFF
JPEG2000
Not: GIF, JPG
E. Audio Files
WAV
Not: mp3