Provide a brief overview of the purpose of the directory.
Give contact information, url, etc. for the source of the data.
Give detailed information on when the files were obtained, how they were obtained (e.g., downloaded from www.xxx.edu, by e-mail, on a hard drive, etc.), and the form they came in (e.g., a single zip archive called "rawdata.zip"). The goal is that anyone who follows these instructions exactly and has the right access should be able to obtain the dataset.
Briefly describe the contents of the subdirectories and files. You do not necessarily need to describe each file separately, but a user should be able to look at the directory and understand the organization and purpose of the files.
What are the terms or restrictions for using the data or publishing findings? Either state these here or state where they can be found within this directory.
Note anything else you think we should record about the raw data.