Phil Reed on The Carpentries

Multiple ways to follow-up after Carpentry trainings: Benefits, impacts and librarians’ wishes

Wed, 11 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

What routines do librarians and other information professionals adopt after a Carpentries training, and what other benefits and impacts does this have on their professional life? These questions were the starting point of a survey developed by the Library Carpentry Advisory Group, LCAG in 2021. We reached out to the wider library community with the aim to gain a better understanding of impacts resulting from training, learn more about their engagement with the Carpentries community and to collect their ideas and wishes for current and future training topics. The survey consisted of 28 questions overall and was open for responses between June and August 2021. We disseminated the survey through various channels, including The Carpentries mailing lists and social media channels, regional mailing lists (e.g. Australia, Asia, Africa) as well as direct contacts to former workshop participants and instructors (via host institutions). Overall, 113 responses were received. Not surprisingly, the majority of respondents are based at universities. Further respondents work in public libraries, special libraries or research organizations. Over two thirds (79 respondents) reported that their library already engages with The Carpentries, and several do so in multiple ways. In addition, 19 respondents work at libraries that are not involved yet but they would like to learn more about The Carpentries. Reported job roles (cf. Figure 1, multiple choice) are strongly related to teaching and learning (45.4%), research support roles (research data management 32.4%, scholarly communication 28.7%), and reference and user services more generally (31.5%). Moreover, several respondents manage collections, digital library services, research and development projects and information and data analytics.

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.

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.

Teaching reproducible science with R to a wide range of experience levels

Fri, 21 Jun 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Carpentries Workshop attendees, Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência, Portugal in May 2019. Photo credit: IGC

My name is Phil Reed (Twitter and GitHub) and I am a relative new-comer to The Carpentries, having qualified as an instructor last autumn. I co-led a Library Carpentry event at The University of Manchester Library where I work as a Data Specialist. In May 2019, I travelled to the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência (IGC) in Oeiras, Portugal to co-lead my first Software Carpentry workshop. The title of this two-day session was “R for Reproducible Scientific Analysis”, covering R and some version control with Git, for bioinformatics researchers and students. Below is a brief evaluation from me, the other co-lead Eric Persson and the head of training at IGC, Pedro Fernandes.