CanWIN Public Guides

Welcome to our CanWIN guides, here you will find information about the Canadian Watershed Information Network (CanWIN) - our platforms, data resources, and best practices to assist with managing, sharing and accessing data hosted by CanWIN.

For an introduction to the CanWIN site and its features, see the Overview of CanWIN page.
To access our main data repository, visit our Data Catalogue.
For help with sharing, curating and finding data in the Data Catalogue, see our Help pages.
To learn more about CanWIN, see our Who we are page.

CanWIN helps researchers to curate and share data that fulfills federal and international data, interoperability, and sharing requirements. We also offer educational data management resources, tools, and consultations to assist researchers in developing data strategies, and implementing data management best practices throughout their data's life.

CanWIN is committed to the FAIR, CARE, and OCAP principles.

FAIR Principles

What is data curation?

In simple terms, data curation is the art of maintaining the value of data.

Curation at CanWIN consists of several steps which take a dataset from its raw state to a form that is understandable, retains value long term, and is FAIR - Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable.

These steps include: The Data Life Cycle

Collecting data
Organizing data
Cleaning data
Enhancing/enriching data
Standardizing data
Storing/preserving data for future use.

Data curation takes place at all stages of the data life cycle.

Navigating this Site

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