On January 5th 2022, data that was collected on Zotero was imported onto a spreadsheet so that the interns could work on this file together and organize the data. For the past three weeks, everyone has been cleaning the data column chosen and assigned to them. I chose the column Original Publication Date. My task is to verify the publication date of each book and insert it into the spreadsheet under the column original publication date. In doing so, I am verifying whether the publication date under each book that was imported from Zotero, is actually accurate. It is a very slow task. On the other hand it is fun, yet challenging. I got to read the summaries of books I never knew existed.

In order to find the date of each book, I utilized the websites World Cat, Internet Archive, Google Books, Amazon Kindle, and Goodreads to search for the books and verify the original publication date. Here are the following steps I used to find the date: first, I would search the title of the book then verify the author under the title online is the same as on the spreadsheet. Next I would double check that other sites have the same date posted as the original publication date and if I could, preview the book to see what date is on the copyright page. After finding the date I would place it in the file. I only did this three times before I came to the conclusion that, the entire shared spreadsheet was too filled for me to focus.

In order words, because there were so many columns between the author column, title column and original publication date column, I found it harder to focus as I had to keep scrolling back and forth on the spreadsheet. Also, I utilized split screen which made it a challenge to see all of the data I needed. To solve this issue, I created my own spreadsheet and copied the columns of Title, Author and Original Publication Date to the new file. Ever since this solution was found, I have been working on this separate file and would transfer the dates now and then to the spreadsheet. All in all, spreadsheet data cleaning has been quite enjoyable.