Chris Erdmann on The Carpentries

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.

Thank you all!

Fri, 27 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000

September 30th will be my last day in the role of Library Carpentry Community & Development Director. I have been fortunate to meet so many amazing people working in libraries and the research community during this time. Thank you to the IMLS, the California Digital Library, and The Carpentries for this great opportunity. So many members of the community have helped Library Carpentry grow these past couple of years, not to mention the initial hard work that went into starting Library Carpentry. Together we have moved Library Carpentry to a formal Lesson Program in The Carpentries. We have welcomed new community members and run more workshops and events around the world. We have improved and expanded the curriculum thanks to the efforts of a diverse community of Maintainers and contributors from around the world. The Curriculum Advisory Committee and the Advisory Group continue to provide invaluable guidance on how we can move forward. Libraries have become an important part of The Carpentries Membership (over 60% are members) and thanks to additional support from the IMLS, libraries will continue to be an important part of the continued success of The Carpentries. I think Elaine Westbrooks, the University Librarian at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill (where I will be headed in October), said it best in her post about the importance of libraries in The Carpentries, The Strategic Value of Library Carpentry and The Carpentries to Research Libraries.

Continued support from IMLS for Library Carpentry

Mon, 16 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000

In November 2017, the California Digital Library (CDL) announced a two-year Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) grant funded project to further advance the scope, adoption, and impact of Library Carpentry across the US. The grant enables CDL and the University of California Curation Center (UC3) to host Chris Erdmann, the Library Carpentry Community and Development Director, and his work with community members, Carpentries staff, and governance groups to integrate Library Carpentry as a lesson program, further develop the curriculum and lessons, grow the community of Carpentries instructors with library and information backgrounds, and continue outreach to raise awareness about Library Carpentry and The Carpentries in the broader library community.

Building a Community for Digital Literacy at ZB MED: The Carpentries and HackyHours

Wed, 19 Jun 2019 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

By Eva Seidlmayer, Konrad Förstner, Silvia Di Giorgio, Chris Erdmann

ZB MED – Information Centre for Life Sciences is the national library of Germany for medicine, health sciences, nutrition, agriculture and the environment. For the life sciences community, ZB MED provides invaluable services such as PUBLISSO, an open access publication portal, and LIVIVO, a literature discovery service. Also, ZB MED established a scientific programme covering a broad spectrum of data science applications from text- and data mining to bioinformatics. This is all a part of ZB MED’s digital transformation to an information centre with a broad spectrum of services and training. To help with this transformation, ZB MED takes advantage of Library, Data, and Software Carpentry training material to provide its employees a foundation in software and data skills.

Need Library Carpentry Stickers? Let Us Know!

Mon, 17 Jun 2019 00:00:00 +0000

**This post originally appeared on the [Library Carpentry website](https://librarycarpentry.org)**

By Chris Erdmann

Stickers are a great way to show your support for, and celebrate your affiliation to Library Carpentry. We get frequent requests for Library Carpentry stickers but haven't been able to avail them at every event. Thanks to the LIR HEAnet User Group for Libraries we will have plenty of stickers on hand for the attendees of our LIBER-LIR-Library Carpentry instructor training 2-day event.

It's a Wrap! The 4th Library Carpentry-Mozilla Global Sprint Concludes.

Wed, 05 Jun 2019 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

By Chris Erdmann

Thanks to everyone that participated in the 4th Mozilla-Library Carpentry Global Sprint. Unlike the 3 previous sprints, this year’s sprint stretched across the full month of May with the majority of the sprint taking place 30-31 May 2019.

The sprint started earlier in the month with Centre for Digital Scholarship at Leiden University Libraries drafting a Top 10 FAIR Data & Software Things for Astronomy.

What have the Library Carpentry Maintainers been working on?

Thu, 25 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

By Chris Erdmann

In January 2019, the Library Carpentry Maintainers met online to discuss a variety of topics from communication channels to giving credit. The discussions helped with tackling big questions and understanding how we wanted to work as Maintainers.

See News from the Library Carpentry Maintainer Community and Curriculum Advisory Committee

What have the Maintainers been up to since then? This blog post will catch you up on what all the lesson Maintainer teams have been doing since January. The following are brief reports from the lesson Maintainer groups:

What’s New at ORCID? A Joint Library Carpentries/ORCID Webinar!

Wed, 17 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

By Alice Meadows, Chris Erdmann

We are delighted to announce that Library Carpentries and ORCID are co-hosting a webinar on What’s New at ORCID. Registration is free – just add your name here – and there will be plenty of opportunity for questions and discussion.

This webinar, at 10am ET on Thursday, May 16, will focus on ORCID’s new API v3.0, launching in May, which includes some valuable new features for researchers, their organizations, and the wider community alike:

Announcing the Library Carpentry Advisory Group

Wed, 10 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

On 15 March 2019, the Library Carpentry Governance Group officially became the Advisory Group. The Advisory Group acts as a critical friend to Carpentries governance and staff and advises on ways to foster greater participation in the Library Carpentry community. The Group meets on a bi-monthly basis to discuss, plan, and pursue strategies for involving new and current members in Library Carpentry. It is not a governance group and does not make decisions for the Library Carpentry community.

Mozilla-Library Carpentry Global Sprint, 30-31 May, 2019

Thu, 28 Mar 2019 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

By Chris Erdmann

Library Carpentry Sprint, 30-31 May, 2019

The Library Carpentry Sprint is part of the 2019 Mozilla Global Sprint, which will take place worldwide throughout the month of May. You can find us on Mozilla Pulse.

We’ve participated in a number of sprints over the years. Have a look at a couple of our past sprints:

Sprints allow us to improve upon and develop new Library Carpentry material while meeting and collaborating with people in the community. If you are new to Library Carpentry, our website has some information to help get you started.

News from the Library Carpentry Maintainer Community and Curriculum Advisory Committee

Thu, 28 Feb 2019 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

By Chris Erdmann

News from the Library Carpentry Maintainer Community and Curriculum Advisory Committee

During the week of 14-17 January 2019, Library Carpentry Maintainers met online to discuss a variety of topics from Communication Channels to Giving Credit. The discussions helped with tackling big questions and understanding how we wanted to work as Maintainers. For a summary (and notes) from the meetings, see:

Top 10 FAIR Data & Software Things

Fri, 01 Feb 2019 00:00:00 +0000

**This post originally appeared on the [Library Carpentry website](https://librarycarpentry.org)**

By Chris Erdmann and Natasha Simons

At CarpentryCon 2018, Bérénice Batut and Katrin Leinweber led an engaging breakout session on “Fostering FAIR Data and Sustainable Software Practices”. At that session, we discussed briefly the need for domain-relevant guidance on FAIR. What is FAIR? To use the International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility or INCF's description:

"The FAIR principles are a set of community-developed guidelines to ensure that data or any digital object are Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable. The FAIR principles specifically emphasize enhancing the ability of machines to automatically find and use data or any digital object, and support its reuse by individuals. Standards for the description, interoperability, citation etc. are at the core of these principles."

Later in the summer, it seemed like perfect timing when the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) approached Library Carpentry about hosting a worldwide sprint on developing FAIR material. Library Carpentry had hosted a series of sprints in the past as part of the Mozilla Global Sprint and ARDC had experience with developing material called “10 Things”. We decided to combine the two and give it a go!

Lesson Program Implementation, Governance Group Meeting, and Community Updates

Thu, 10 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

By Chris Erdmann

Lesson Program Implementation

As mentioned in a recent Carpentries blog post on 1 November 2018, Library Carpentry is now an official Lesson Program of The Carpentries. In the post, we outlined our next steps, in other words, our implementation plan to make this so. We’d like to update the community about where we are at with regard to the plan.

The official Lesson Program language has been integrated into a number of Carpentries resources including our Library Carpentry websites, GitHub organization and instructional repositories, policies, handbook, onboarding material, request forms, surveys, one pagers, slides, badges, trainer/instructor etherpads/documents, and social media profiles. We’ve added collaborators from The Carpentries staff, Library Carpentry Curriculum Advisory Committee and Governance Group to our GitHub organisations. Also, Cam Macdonell (MacEwan University), a longtime member of the Library Carpentry community, has joined The Carpentries infrastructure group.

Library Carpentry Is Now Officially a Lesson Program!

Fri, 02 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000

By Tracy Teal and Chris Erdmann

Library Carpentry is now officially a Lesson Program!

On 1 November 2018, The Carpentries Executive Council voted to officially approve Library Carpentry as a Lesson Program. It now joins Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry as official Lesson Programs. While the vote was quick, the work to become an official Lesson Program spans across many years involving many community members and their contributions. As noted in a recent blog post, over two hundred instructors and helpers have contributed to hosting, teaching, mentoring, developing, and maintaining Library Carpentry since 2015. Nearly three hundred events have been hosted by libraries since 2015 and interest from libraries in Library Carpentry and The Carpentries continues to grow. The library community’s contributions to The Carpentries is an important piece of our continued success and we too see their strategic value to growing our efforts at organisations across the world!

We just passed 2K Twitter followers!

Wed, 24 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000

**This post originally appeared on the [Library Carpentry website](https://librarycarpentry.org)**

By Chris Erdmann

It’s time to celebrate a milestone. On October 24th, 2018, the Library Carpentry Twitter account passed two thousand followers! We thought it would be a great opportunity to summarise our Twitter analytics.

To start, here are our top 5 tweets by impressions since we created the account in May 2016:

Big news today. BIG NEWS. We have a new website: https://t.co/nC1p4gbIAw
We would love your thoughts and comments. Raise an issue on this repo https://t.co/BU5gLKgrEf We finished it during #mozsprint #lc2018

Library Carpentry’s Next Step Towards Becoming a Carpentries Lesson Program

Mon, 15 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000

By Chris Erdmann, Tracy Teal, John Chodacki

What Does It Mean to Be a Lesson Program?

When Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry merged to become The Carpentries, one of the important things we needed to figure out was what it meant to be ‘a Carpentry’ within The Carpentries. Originally called Lesson Organisations in the merger discussions, they have been updated to be called ‘Lesson Programs’ in the current draft of the bylaws.

The idea for the Lesson Programs is that The Carpentries as an organisation can provide the operational and governance capacity and framework, and the Lesson Programs can focus on the goals, audience, and content of the curriculum within their program. This meant that Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry could retain the spirit of their lessons and community enthusiasm for those areas, while aligning operations around Membership, workshops, instructor training and other capacity building activities. It also created a pathway for new Lesson Programs, particularly for Library Carpentry, which was already an active community with a developing curriculum and interim governance group. We knew that working with Library Carpentry was on the short-term horizon.

Announcing the Top 10 FAIR Data Things Global Sprint

Thu, 11 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

Announcing the Top 10 FAIR Data Things Global Sprint

Join us on 29-30 November 2018, for the Top 10 FAIR Data Things Global Sprint! The Sprint is being organised by Library Carpentry, Australian Research Data Commons and the Research Data Alliance Libraries for Research Data Interest Group in collaboration with FOSTER Open Science, OpenAire, RDA Europe, Data Management Training Clearinghouse, California Digital Library, Dryad, AARNet, Center for Digital Scholarship at the Leiden University, and DANS.

Report back from University of Calgary Libraries

Wed, 05 Sep 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

By Chris Erdmann

Thanks to the University of Calgary Libraries

Thanks to the University of Calgary Libraries for recently hosting both a Library Carpentry Workshop (28-29 August) and a Carpentries Instructor Training for Librarians (30-31 August). The events were possible thanks to support from John Brosz, Renee Reaume, Susan Powelson, Ingrid Reiche, Paul Pival, Calum Center, and University of Calgary Libraries staff. The Taylor Family Digital Library’s state-of-the-art teaching and collaboration spaces were perfect for The Carpentries hands-on pedagogical approaches used by the trainers and instructors, Juliane Schneider, Karen Word, and Chris Erdmann.

University of Oregon Libraries and Oregon State University Libraries Team Up to Teach First Library Carpentry Workshop in Oregon

Mon, 20 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

By Jonathan Cain, Sarah Seymore, Steven Van Tuyl, Clara Llebot, Ryan Wick, Chris Erdmann

On March 16 and March 23, the University of Oregon Libraries and Oregon State University Libraries teamed up to teach the first Library Carpentry workshops in the state of Oregon, which were open to all Orbis Cascade Alliance members. These workshops were intended to help people working in library- and information-related roles in the Northwest improve their competencies and efficiencies through better understanding of the structure and organization data, automating repetitive, error prone tasks, and maintaining and analysing sustainable and reusable data.

New England Libraries Team Up to Become Carpentries Members

Mon, 13 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

By Joshua Dull, Thea Atwood, Andrew Creamer, Julie Goldman, Kristin Lee, Lora Leligdon, Sara Oelker, Chris Erdmann

How can libraries get involved and become Carpentries members? The New England libraries had an innovative approach to this question: work as a team. The New England Software Carpentry Library Consortium, or NESCLiC for short, brought together library staff from seven academic libraries: Yale, Harvard, Tufts, Dartmouth, UMass Amherst, Brown, and Mt. Holyoke.

NESCLiC shares the costs and benefits that go along with Gold Tier membership, but the Consortium also allows staff from the different areas of academic librarianship and technology, including the digital humanities, statistics, high performance computing, sciences, engineering, medical libraries, and data services, to work together on Carpentries initiatives in their libraries.

Announcing the Library Carpentry Curriculum Advisory Committee

Thu, 09 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

By Chris Erdmann

I’m happy to announce the members of the inaugural Library Carpentry Curriculum Advisory Committee (CAC):

Carmi Cronje, CSIRO, Australia
Katrin Leinweber, TIB Hannover, Germany
Mark Laufersweiler, University of Oklahoma, USA
Tim Dennis, UCLA, USA
Erika Mias, Cape Town, South Africa
Chris Erdmann, CDL/The Carpentries, USA (ex officio, logistics)

The Carpentries Handbook provides a description of the philosophy guiding the Committee and the responsibilities of Curriculum Advisors.

What constitutes a Library Carpentry workshop?

Tue, 07 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

By Chris Erdmann, Belinda Weaver, John Chodacki, Juliane Schneider, Jez Cope, Kayleigh Lino, Tim Dennis, Cam Macdonell

Given that Library Carpentry currently has nine lessons on its books, and a couple more in draft form, the question of exactly what constitutes an ‘official’ Library Carpentry workshop is timely.

On 17 May, Belinda Weaver opened an issue about this question, proposing what lessons should be taught for a workshop to be badged as Library Carpentry. The issue asked others in the community to comment. The issue received 10 comments from Chris Erdmann, Jez Cope, Kayleigh Lino, Juliane Schneider, Veronica Ikeshoji-Orlati, Greg Wilson, James Baker, and Lauren Ko. Out of the current Library Carpentry lessons, the bulk of comments identified Introduction to Data, the UNIX Shell, Introduction to Git, and OpenRefine as the core lessons that should be taught at a Library Carpentry workshop.

Seventy-One Workshops... and Counting

Wed, 01 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

By Belinda Weaver, Chris Erdmann, Tim Dennis, Juliane Schneider, Carmi Cronje, Jez Cope

Seventy-one Library Carpentry workshops have now been taught around the world, including one-day, two-day, and multi-day events, with future workshops being added every day.

With this milestone behind us, it is important to pause and appreciate what has been achieved so far by the community. Since 2015, more than 102 instructors and 123 helpers, 225 in total, have contributed to Library Carpentry training events in 13 countries. We have collaboratively developed open educational lessons to teach software and data skills for anyone who works in libraries or similar organisations.

A Carpentries-Based Approach to Teaching FAIR Data and Software Principles

Tue, 24 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

By Chris Erdmann

Recently, I was lucky to participate in an innovative workshop held at Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB) Hannover from 9 - 13 July, 2018, which paired The Carpentries’ pedagogical style of teaching and lesson material with in-depth background on the FAIR Data Principles. FAIR comprises a set of guiding principles to make data findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (Wilkinson et al., 2016). FAIR is a relatively new initiative that is gaining momentum. Key stakeholders across the research lifecycle are exploring how the underlying FAIR Principles can be applied and assessed at various points. For instance, at the 2018 Research Data Alliance (RDA) Plenary Meeting in Berlin, FAIR was mentioned in at least 23 of the sessions:

Carpentries in the Libraries Community Calls

Wed, 11 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

By Chris Erdmann

Time to talk about data and software skills in libraries

One of the strengths of The Carpentries is its community and libraries are great places to foster conversations around data and software skills. There are a number of places where our community can have conversations and get involved - these include our Library Carpentry GitHub, Gitter channel, and Topicbox list. Now there is another option. Starting in August, we will start a monthly online calls series for one hour with the following format:

The Carpentries Instructor Training for Librarians

Tue, 26 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

By Chris Erdmann, John Chodacki

We are pleased to announce an open Carpentries instructor training course on 30-31 August geared specifically for the Library Carpentry movement supported by a grant to the California Digital Library from the IMLS.

Open call for instructor training

This course will take place in Calgary, Alberta, Canada at the University of Calgary Libraries. The two-day course is open to anyone and the event will focus on preparing members of the library community as Carpentries instructors. The sessions will be led by Carpentries staff and community members, Karen Word, Juliane Schneider, and Chris Erdmann.

Library Carpentry Community Update

Wed, 20 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

By Chris Erdmann, Belinda Weaver

Report-back from CarpentryCon and the latest governance call

Things are moving along nicely in the Library Carpentry community, helped by regular meetings of the governance group and lots of face to face talking at the recent CarpentryCon event in Dublin, where we ran a Library Carpentry Onboarding Workshop. Many people at CarpentryCon were keen to talk Library Carpentry. We are now firming up our ideas about our audience, and what constitutes a workshop, and we are currently discussing how we can get more workshops organised and more instructors trained. (We hope to announce an instructor training event shortly.)

Library Carpentry Hackathon a Great Success

Wed, 16 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

By Chris Erdmann and Belinda Weaver

Library Carpentry ran a two-day hackathon over 10-11 May as part of the annual Mozilla Global Sprint.

This was the third hackathon run by the worldwide Library Carpentry community. As ever, it was a great success, pulling in a number of people new to this community. Sprint participants from Melbourne had attended their first-ever Library Carpentry workshop only a week before.

Library Carpentry Hackathon a Great Success

Wed, 16 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Library Carpentry ran a two-day hackathon over 10-11 May as part of the annual Mozilla Global Sprint.

This was the third hackathon run by the worldwide Library Carpentry community. As ever, it was a great success, pulling in a number of people new to this community. Sprint participants from Melbourne had attended their first ever Library Carpentry workshop only a week before.

Pre-sprint, all the repositories formerly housed in data-lessons were moved over to the new Library Carpentry organisation on GitHub.

Building Library Carpentry Community and Development

Thu, 12 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

We are excited to announce that Chris Erdmann has been hired as the Library Carpentry Community and Development Director starting on 4 May, 2018.

Chris has worked in libraries for more than 21 years to integrate data management and workflows in database and library systems. Through training, consulting and tool development to build programs, he has tried to empower people in research and library communities to work effectively with data. Chris received his MLIS at the University of Washington iSchool while working at the University’s Technology Transfer Office, where he helped automate workflows and develop the unit’s web presence and analytics. He spent roughly ten years working alongside astronomers at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics to advance library data-mining and linking services, e.g. ESO Telescope Bibliography. Also during this time, he led an experimental training series called Data Scientist Training for Librarians (DST4L) geared towards teaching librarians data-savvy skills to help transform their library services to meet the needs of their research communities. He recently joined the Library Carpentry governance group.

Building Library Carpentry Community and Development

Thu, 12 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

We are excited to announce that Chris Erdmann has been hired as the Library Carpentry Community and Development Director starting May 4, 2018.