Data entry is the process of digitizing data by
entering it into a computer system for organization and management
purposes. It's a person-based process and is
"one of the important basic" tasks needed when no
machine-readable version of the information is readily available for
planned computer-based analysis or processing.Sometimes what is
needed is
"information about information (that) can be greater than the value
of the information itself." It can also involve filling in required information which is then
"data-entered" from what was written on the research
document, such as the growth in available items in a category. This
is a higher level of abstraction than Metadata,
"information about data" Common errors in data entry include
transposition errors, misclassified data, duplicate data, and omitted
data, which are similar to bookkeeping errors.