OpenRefine (formerly Google Refine) is a free-to-use powerful tool for working with messy data, cleaning it, and transforming it from one format into another.
OpenRefine is a great tool to clean really dirty data - the kind of data in which the same name might be spelled in 30 different ways. It's easy to use, and after the session you'll be able to work with OpenRefine on your own.
Before the session, please download and test OpenRefine. It'll run on Windows, Mac and Linux.
You don't need to install anything, but you must download a zipped folder (66 MB). Find instructions for download here:
http://openrefine.org/download.html
