Fun with VCS - more with less: A Tool for Facilitating the Use of Git in Linguistic Research Data Management

The work with digital data demands some form of version control. In its simplest and still common appearance version control consists of file naming conventions, and often some creative form of duplication of files. The rising degree of collaboration in data creation and complexity of data, however, brings these basic methods to their limits, which is one of many practical and theoretical reasons why explicit and structured version control with the help of a version control system (VCS) is required. The introduction and use of a VCS for research data in the humanities faces the obstacle of a steep learning curve and poses severe problems with regard to usability, since VCS implementations mostly originate from software engineering. To deal with this problem we discuss the open source script LAMA which is used to perform operations with the VCS Git. Using LAMA does not require in-depth knowledge of the VCS or additional technical expertise, so the focus of the individual researcher can remain on the creation of the research data itself. Additional advantages include messenger integration and the option to run consistency operations with pluggable tools.