How to Write a README

Readme files are simple documentation files that can be included with data packages and are a way to convey information to yourself and others about your data packages. Documenting your data packages can help you remember where you have placed data, and how you structured data, which can be helpful when revisiting data after a vacation or a few years. In this workshop, we'll show where to find the UU Geosciences faculty README template, how to edit it, and what information to put in README files.  In this workshop, we aimed to reach the following learning outcome:

• Where to save the README file 

• How to create a README file 

• What information to include in a README 

• Learn where to download the UU Geosciences README template 

• How to edit the UU Geosciences README template 

  • Why it is important at different research phases (with examples)

  • Introduce different components of the README file 

  • Provide them tips and tricks to customize their README files 

In the presentation, we provided general information about README, its contents, and in which file format it should be created. It was shown how to use Markdown (.md) file format to write stylish README using some examples given in the MarkDown_Writing_tips file. We use an online Markdown editor to show this example.

In the second part of the workshop, we showed where the participants can find the README templates of the Faculty of Geoscience and use them for their purposes. 

In the third part of the workshop, the participants were divided into three groups. Each group received real a README to review and identify what are the missing parts and give suggestions to improve each of them. Each group had up to 5 minutes to explain what they found in README. The READMEs that were used in this part are included in the README.zip file.