Library Carpentry OpenRefine: Setup

Getting ready

You need to download and install OpenRefine and download a data file to follow this lesson.

Downloading OpenRefine

You can download OpenRefine from http://openrefine.org/download.html. This lesson has been tested with all versions of OpenRefine, from 2.5 to 2.7.

OpenRefine 2.7 is recommended.

There are versions for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

Installing and Running OpenRefine

When you download OpenRefine for Windows or Linux from the address above, you are downloading a zip file. To install OpenRefine you simply unzip the downloaded file wherever you want to install the program. This can be to a personal directory or to an applications or software directory - OpenRefine should run wherever you put the unzipped folder. The location has to be a “local” drive as problems have been reported trying to run OpenRefine from a Network drive.

If you are downloading OpenRefine for Mac, you are downloading a ‘dmg’ (disk image) file which you can open, and then drag the OpenRefine application to an appropriate folder on you computer.

OpenRefine is a Java application, and you need to have a ‘Java Runtime Environment’ (JRE) installed on your computer to run OpenRefine. If you don’t already have one installed then you can download and install from http://java.com by going to the site and clicking “Free Java Download”.

To run Refine:

• On Windows: Navigate to the folder where you’ve installed OpenRefine and either double-click ‘google-refine.exe’ (for Google Refine 2.5), ’openrefine.exe’ (for OpenRefine 2.7) or ‘refine.bat’ (for either)
• On Linux: Navigate to the folder where you’ve installed OpenRefine in a terminal window and type ‘./refine’
• On Mac: Navigate to where you installed OpenRefine and click the OpenRefine icon

The interface to OpenRefine is accessed via a web browser. When you run Refine normally this should open a window in your default web browser pointing at the address http://127.0.0.1:3333. If this doesn’t happen automatically you can open a web browser and type in this address.

Getting Help

If you encounter problems installing or running OpenRefine, a good source of support is the OpenRefine mailing list and forum

If you are installing OpenRefine on Windows, you may want to check the thread on Installing OpenRefine on Windows 7

There are also general and specialist tutorials about using OpenRefine available on the web, including:

• Getting started with OpenRefine by Thomas Padilla
• Cleaning Data with OpenRefine by Seth van Hooland, Ruben Verborgh and Max De Wilde
• Blog posts on using OpenRefine from Owen Stephens
• Identifying potential headings for Authority work using III Sierra, MS Excel and OpenRefine
• Free your metadata website
• Data Munging Tools in Preparation for RDF: Catmandu and LODRefine by Christina Harlow
• OpenRefine News (monthly round up of new blog posts, tutorials and other information)

Downloading the data

There are a number of ways to get the data we will be using in OpenRefine.

1. Once you have started OpenRefine, use this link https://raw.githubusercontent.com/LibraryCarpentry/lc-open-refine/gh-pages/data/doaj-article-sample.csv to import the data directly into OpenRefine using the Web Addresses URLs option.

2. You can download doaj-article-sample.csv, which is a csv file that will open in a new browser tab. Be sure to right click or control click in order to save the file (NOTE: In Safari, right click and select download linked file; in Chrome and Firefox, right click and select save link as). Make a note of the location (i.e the folder, your desktop) to which you save the file.