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Data cleaning made easier with OpenRefine Online
- What: This 2-hour workshop will provide an introduction to OpenRefine, a powerful open-source tool for exploring, cleaning, and manipulating “messy” data, to prepare it for analysis and visualization. Through a combination of lecture, demonstrations, and activities, participants will learn how to: inderstand what kinds of tasks are involved in data cleaning, understand why data cleaning is important, get started using OpenRefine for data cleaning to manipulate both textual and numeric data, transform and reshape datasets, and search and filter data in a variety of ways
- Why: In an ideal world, any data you collect or obtain would be clean and formatted perfectly for analysis and visualization. But the reality is that data can be really messy! Cleaning and reformatting your data can be a time-consuming and tedious task, but there are ways to speed things up and automate repetitive tasks. OpenRefine can help!
- Software: OpenRefine is free to download and use.
- Who: This workshop is designed for absolute beginners. Skills gained can help participants from any discipline: Humanities, Social Sciences, or Sciences.
- When: Thursday, November 6, 10am - 12pm
- Where: Online via Zoom link (provided upon registration)
- How: This is a 2 hour in-person workshop, consisting of demonstrations as well as breaks for self-paced activities. One instructor will be demonstrating while the other instructor will be floating around the room providing assistance. There will be plenty of opportunities to ask any questions and practice as we go!
- Code of Conduct: Map & Data Library (MDL) workshops are a welcoming and inclusive environment for learning. To learn more, check out our Code of Conduct.
- Accessibility: The MDL is committed to making our workshops accessible to everyone. If you require an accommodation to fully participate in the workshop, please contact Kara Handren (kara Handren@utoronto.ca) to discuss options.
- Complementary Learning Materials: Check out our OpenRefine online tutorials, previous workshop recording, or self-enroll in our online, self-paced workshop: Working with Messy Data in OpenRefine.
Join your peers to meet new people and learn new skills in a welcoming and encouraging environment!
- Date:
- Thursday, November 6, 2025
- Time:
- 10:00am - 12:00pm
- Time Zone:
- Eastern Time - US & Canada (change)
- Online:
- This is an online event. Event URL will be sent via registration email.
- Audience:
- Faculty Graduate Students Staff Undergraduate Students
- Categories:
- Data & Statistics Digital Tools Workshop
Registration has closed.
Event Organizer
Nick Field
Nick Field (they/them) is the Data Support Specialist at the Map & Data Library. They have a PhD from U of T, where they wrote their doctoral dissertation on archaeological maps of the Silk Road.
They help researchers and students find and work with maps and geospatial data.
Kara Handren
Kara Handren (she/her) is a Data Librarian at the Map & Data Library. She has an MA (History) and MI, both from UofT.
She supports Quantitative Data Discovery, Text & Data Mining (TDM), and Data Cleaning and Analysis

