Ariel Deardorff on The Carpentries

Announcing New Members of the Library Carpentry Advisory Group

Thu, 11 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Following on from January’s Call for Applications, the Library Carpentry Advisory Group is pleased to welcome seven new members to our team. Selected from a pool of excellent applicants, they will begin their 3-year terms this month. Please join us in welcoming:

Sara King - Australia

Dr Sara King is the Training and Engagement Lead for AARNet. She is focused on outreach within the research sector, developing communities of interest around training, outreach and skills development in eResearch. She is passionate about helping others develop the infrastructure and digital literacies required for working in a data-driven world, translating technology so it is accessible to everyone. This year she is looking forward to working with the university library community to develop skills around active research data management, data analysis with Jupyter Notebooks and how to improve personal resilience in ever-changing technological and work environments.

Library Carpentry Advisory Group Call for New Members

Tue, 08 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The Library Carpentry Advisory Group acts as a key friend to The Carpentries governance and Core Team and advises on ways to foster greater participation in the Library Carpentry community. The Advisory Group discusses, plans, and pursues strategies for involving new and current members in Library Carpentry. Members of the Group volunteer to serve three year terms, with increasing levels of responsibility and leadership each year.

Benefits of Being on the Advisory Group

Advisory Group members have the opportunity to work closely with a global community of librarians, archivists, and information professionals dedicated to expanding data and computational skills in library and information science communities.

Expanding The Carpentries Community in California

Thu, 12 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Between January and September 2020, I had the opportunity to work with an amazing group of librarians to develop the Carpentries community in California academic libraries. The goal for this project - which was funded by an IMLS grant through the California Digital Library - was to create sustainable communities of academic libraries across California that could work together to make computational training more accessible to librarians and the communities that they serve. I hoped to partner with existing Carpentries member libraries (largely in the University of California system) to teach workshops that would reach librarians in underserved state schools and community colleges. The plan was to offer Library Carpentry workshops, train librarians to teach with Instructor Training workshops, build local communities of practice, and promote Carpentries membership. With the COVID-19 pandemic we had to reimagine many aspects of the project to work in the virtual environment, but I was able to meet most of the original goals thanks to the work of many dedicated collaborators.

Teaching a Library Carpentry Workshop in Southern California (and the Virtual Yonder)

Thu, 22 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

From August 10 to 13, we taught a virtual Library Carpentry workshop to 18 librarians, primarily from California.

Our Audience

Our primary audience was librarians and library staff from the California State University (CSUs) system, a system that is relatively new to the Carpentries. When we first planned this workshop, we planned to teach it in-person at the California State University, Long Beach (CSULB) campus and therefore we anticipated our audience would be mostly from Southern California. While we missed the benefits of in-person connections and interactivity, our instruction team was excited to be able to reach a much wider audience across the CSUs. We had attendees from all across California, from Humboldt State in the north to San Diego in the south, and many points in between. Additionally, we opened up slots for librarians from other California academic libraries and also had one international attendee from South Africa!

Recent Publications Highlighting the Value of the Carpentries in Academic Libraries

Tue, 22 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The following three articles are highlighted in the new Library Carpentry Zotero collection.

How Library Carpentry helps us to transform our data and our training

Phil Reed, Data Specialist (Teaching, Learning and Students), The University of Manchester Library

There continues to be much discussion around more advanced digital skills in many aspects of library and information professional practice. Some particular issues highlighted for metadata and cataloguing work include the need for a competency framework, establishing what specific skills learners need, and maintaining a pool of instructors. In this journal article, Phil looks at the emergence of Library Carpentry workshops in the north of England, describing how the community could develop to meet the training and development needs of multiple fields in the sector. It includes a case study on a new lesson he has been involved in building about TEI XML, inspired by Manchester’s special collection, which may also serve as a way to encourage buy-in for The Carpentries from new institutions.

We Appreciate Library Carpentry

Fri, 24 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I am incredibly grateful for the Library Carpentry Advisory Committee (Birgit, Yared, Liz, David, Julie, Tim, Konrad, Jeff, John, Tim, Chris, Mark, Phil, and Carmi) for taking on the work of guiding Library Carpentry into the next chapter. Specific shoutouts to Chris Erdmann for his work making Library Carpentry a fully-fledged part of The Carpentries, Liz Stokes for taking on the role of co-chair with me, and Carmi Cronje for her leadership on the Curriculum Committee. We have an ambitious set of goals for the next couple of years and I look forward to growing this community together.

Expanding the Carpentries Community in California Academic Libraries

Thu, 16 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000

As the Data Services Librarian at the University of California, San Francisco, and co-chair of the Library Carpentry Advisory Committee, I have been privileged to witness the transformative impact of data and software training for librarians. Whether it is a cataloging librarian figuring out how to automate data uploads, an instruction librarian realizing there is an easier way to clean their messy class registration data, or a research data management librarian who now has the language to connect with computational researchers, data training allows librarians to become invaluable resources to their libraries and academic communities. I am therefore very excited to share that I will be working with The Carpentries Team on a special project to develop the Carpentries community in academic libraries across California. The goal of this project is to create sustainable communities of academic libraries that can work together to make computational training more accessible to librarians and the communities that they serve. As part of this project, I will be reaching out to promote the work of the Carpentries in regional library groups, piloting new membership models for library networks and consortia, assisting with Library Carpentry workshops across the state, and offering more instructor training opportunities for California librarians.

UCSF is Hiring

Wed, 30 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The UCSF Library’s Data Science Initiative is hiring! We are looking for a biomedical researcher with an entrepreneurial spirit and a passion for programming in R/Python, bioinformatics, data curation, statistics, data visualization (or all of the above) to serve as the Scientific Lead for our Data Science Initiative. We are taking a broad approach to data science, and are looking for someone who will work to identify the data science needs of the UCSF research community, help build a Library-based hub for data science activities, develop programs and events, and teach workshops and classes. To find out more about this position please visit https://aprecruit.ucsf.edu/apply/JPF01144.