Using OpenRefine

The book is styled on a Cookbook, containing recipes - combined with free datasets - which will turn readers into proficient OpenRefine users in the fastest possible way. This book is targeted at anyone who works on or handles a large amount of data. No prior knowledge of OpenRefine is required, as we start from the very beginning and gradually reveal more advanced features. You don't even need your own dataset, as we provide example data to try out the book's recipes.

Ruben Verborgh is a PhD researcher in Semantic Hypermedia. He is fascinated by the Web's immense possibilities and tries to contribute ideas that will maybe someday slightly influence the way the Web changes all of us. His degree in Computer Science Engineering convinced him more than ever that communication is the most crucial thing for IT-based solutions. This is why he really enjoys explaining things to those eager to learn. In 2011, he launched the Free Your Metadata project together with Seth van Hooland and Max De Wilde, which aims to evangelize the importance of bringing your data on the Web. This book is one of the assets in this continuing quest. He currently works at Multimedia Lab, a research group of iMinds, Ghent University, Belgium, in the domains of Semantic Web, Web APIs, and Adaptive Hypermedia. Together with Seth van Hooland, he's writing Linked Data for Libraries, Archives, and Museums, Facet Publishing, a practical guide for metadata practitioners.

Max De Wilde is a PhD researcher in Natural Language Processing and a teaching assistant at the Universit libre de Bruxelles (ULB), department of Information and Communication Sciences. He holds a Master's degree in Linguistics from the ULB and an Advanced Master's in Computational Linguistics from the University of Antwerp. Currently, he is preparing a doctoral thesis on the impact of language-independent information extraction on document retrieval. At the same time, he works as a full-time assistant and supervises practical classes for Master's level students in a number of topics, including database quality, document management, and architecture of information systems.