Library Carpentry on The Carpentries

Calling Community Pilots: 14 New Open Science Lessons for Library Carpentry

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Lessons for Librarians in Open Science Principles and Methods project, funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), has reached an exciting milestone. Over the past two years, we’ve worked with 27 expert authors across 14 teams to develop 15 new lesson repositories focused on open science for librarians.

Ten Years of Library Carpentry

Thu, 27 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

November 2025 marks the tenth anniversary of the very first Library Carpentry workshop at the Centre for Information Science, City University London. Past and present contributors to the lesson program got together last week to celebrate the milestone, share their memories, and express their gratitude for the many successes of the project over the last decade.

Calling for new Lesson Program Governors

Tue, 29 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Lesson Program Governance Committees (LPGCs) of Library Carpentry and Software Carpentry are looking for new members. This is an exciting time for both projects as they consider expanding their range of workshops. Joining the community governance body is a great way to guide the development and support the progress of a lesson program.

What is a Lesson Program Governor?

LPGCs oversee the strategy of the lesson program, advocate for the project in their networks, and act as a point of contact for the project e.g., liaising with the Board of Directors, the Core Team, and the wider community. Learn more about the powers and responsibilities of the committees in a previous blog post and check out the Lesson Program Governors Handbook for other resources that support this community role.

Library Carpentry Curriculum Advisory Committee Approves the Introduction to MarcEdit lesson

Tue, 18 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

We are excited to share that the Library Carpentry Curriculum Advisory Committee (LC-CAC) announces the new beta Introduction to MarcEdit lesson. The lesson demonstrates using MarcEdit to profile, manipulate, and enhance library data in the MARC 21 format. It introduces the tools and functionality needed for many processes required for library and information workers working with library MARC data. This lesson is for those who have never used or have a rudimentary knowledge of MarcEdit. The primary learning objective is to provide learners with the necessary foundation to use MarcEdit and know where to seek more advanced skills.

The Carpentries’ Websites Relaunched!

Mon, 18 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

We are pleased to announce that today, 18 November, we have relaunched the main Carpentries website and the three lesson program websites! All four websites have been redesigned to allow for integrated navigation between them, allowing the viewer to navigate to any other one of the websites from another. The URLs for the main Carpentries website, as well as the Software Carpentry, Data Carpentry, and Library Carpentry websites all remain the same.

Recently, we outlined how the websites were redesigned to provide an overview of The Carpentries, primarily for the general public, Carpentries member organisations, funders, and sponsors, as well as new members to the community or members who would like a refresher on The Carpentries’ core operations and community structure.

Almost Ready: The Carpentries’ new websites and Handbooks

Wed, 30 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

We shared that The Carpentries is on a journey towards consolidating its resources and lesson programs - Data Carpentry, Software Carpentry, and Library Carpentry - under one unified identity. To achieve this goal, we migrated the blog posts from the three lesson program websites to The Carpentries main blog. Shortly after that, we announced that the content on these lesson programs’ websites was pared down to only display each lesson program’s lessons, past and upcoming workshops, and its governance structure, with all other content incorporated into the main website of The Carpentries.

Library Carpentry Curriculum Advisory Committee Announces New Lesson: Introducing Computational Thinking

Wed, 23 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

The idea for the Introducing Computational Thinking lesson came from my own experiences of teaching Software Carpentry lessons and learning to code. While Software Carpentry taught the fundamentals of task automation and coding, it did not directly address how to break problems down or how to apply a coding mindset to research questions. As a result, when I tried to apply what I had learned, I found it challenging to break problems down into computable chunks. I therefore saw a lesson on computational thinking as a necessary precursor to learning how to code.

Lesson programs' websites content pared down

Tue, 30 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The content on the three Carpentries lesson programs websites - Data Carpentry, Software Carpentry, and Library Carpentry - has been pared down to only display each lesson program’s lessons, past and upcoming workshops, and its governance structure. All other content pertaining to each lesson program has been incorporated into the main website of The Carpentries. Users of the satellite websites can be redirected from the lesson program websites to The Carpentries website. This change was effected on 29 July 2024.

Library Carpentry Curriculum Advisory Committee Approves a Major Update to the LC Python Lesson

Wed, 26 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

We are excited to announce that the Library Carpentry Curriculum Advisory Committee (LC-CAC) has approved a major update to the Python Intro for Libraries lesson.

The lesson demonstrates how to use Python to clean, analyse, and visualise library usage data, providing an introduction to reproducible workflows in Python for library and information workers. While the lesson repurposes some elements from the previous Library Carpentry Introduction to Python, it is a major overhaul that includes a new library-specific dataset, the use of JupyterLab instead of Spyder, and new episodes that use Pandas to tidy a dataset and Plotly to visualise data.

Library Carpentry Curriculum Committee Approves Data Management Plan Lesson

Tue, 11 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

We are excited to announce that the Library Carpentry Curriculum Advisory Committee (LC-CAC) has approved a new lesson Data Management Plan Course for Librarians for inclusion in the Library Carpentry curriculum. This course was developed as part of an Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS) grant to UCLA to develop open science lessons for Library Carpentry.

This course provides an introduction to conducting data management plan (DMP) services for librarians. By the end of this course, librarians should be equipped to offer basic DMP review services to researchers.

Advancing AI Education in GLAM: Highlights from the Library Carpentry Code Sprint

Tue, 26 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The lesson maintainers for Intro to AI for GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums) and the Library Carpentry Curriculum Advisory Committee (the LC-CAC) co-hosted a seven-hour online code sprint on Jan 31, 2024 to help contribute bug fixes, edits, and improvements to this popular new lesson.

With the aim of moving the beta lesson closer to a stable release and adding it to the core Library Carpentry curriculum, a diverse group of global participants gathered to work on the lesson. Fourteen participants with a range of affiliations and expertise collaborated together during shifts that were hosted throughout the Sprint by Phil Reed, Cody Hennesy, Tim Dennis, and Leigh Phan. Participants included representatives from Hugging Face (UK), the University of Manchester (UK), the Medical Research Council at the Gambia Unit at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, the Smithsonian Institution, the State Archives of Baden-Württemberg (DE), The National Archives (UK), the University of California, Los Angeles (US), the University of Minnesota (US), and the University of Cape Town, South Africa.

Lesson programs' blog posts migration

Wed, 20 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

As of today, blog posts will no longer appear on the three lesson program websites. All blog posts that were on the Software Carpentry, Data Carpentry, and Library Carpentry websites are now merged with the blog posts at The Carpentries blog.

In addition to this change, you will also see a pagination feature at the bottom of the list of blog posts to cycle through the list of posts. Also, you will see a new sidebar that lets you view the entire blog archive or browse posts by author or browse posts by tag.

Welcoming the New Lesson Program Governance Committees

Mon, 08 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I am delighted to announce the new Lesson Program Governance Committees for Data Carpentry, Library Carpentry, and Software Carpentry. These committees will provide community leadership for each lesson program, with responsibility to oversee project strategy, advocate for the lesson program and its community, and to communicate with the Executive Council, the Core Team, and the Carpentries community as a whole.

These committees are essential to the long-term health of The Carpentries as a community-led organisation, and I am deeply grateful to the following community members for stepping into the role.

Calling for Volunteers to join a Lesson Program Governance Committee

Tue, 24 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This post was updated on 3rd February 2023, extending the deadline for applications to the end of Wednesday 15th February 2023 Anywhere on Earth.

The Carpentries has three lesson programs, Software Carpentry, Library Carpentry, and Data Carpentry. In November, I published a post describing the governance structure of each lesson program, and outlining a plan to introduce more community governance in the form of Lesson Program Governance Committees (LPGCs). Today, 24 January we open the call for volunteers to form these new committees. The call for volunteers will remain open until the end of 5th February, and I encourage anyone interested in community leadership and guiding the development of one of the lesson programs to apply.

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.

Lessons for Librarians in Open Science Principles and Methods

Sat, 17 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The UCLA Library is pleased to announce a call for proposals for Lessons for Librarians in Open Science Principles and Methods, a two-year (2023-2024) project funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Service (IMLS) to incentivize lesson authors to develop and refine seven lessons each year through two-year sequential summer workshops. This initial call is for lesson proposals to form the project’s first-year cohort (2023).

The project seeks to support continued skills development for librarians in open science by creating a librarian-focused curriculum. Led by the UCLA Library Data Science Center, the project will award each recipient (individual or group) with $5,000 for developing an open science lesson. Authors will design and refine lessons through summer workshops utilizing the Carpentries Curriculum Development guidelines and the Collaborative Lesson Development Training program as frameworks for curriculum development. The program was designed by a team at UCLA, including the chair of the Library Carpentry Curriculum Advisory Committee (LC-CAC), Tim Dennis, and certified Carpentries instructor Zhiyuan Yao. Inspired by the Carpentries’ evidence-based teaching and learning model, the team will work closely to align new lessons with existing Carpentries’ lessons, and leverage the Carpentries’ technical infrastructure to create new open-source lessons on GitHub. In addition, a member of LC-CAC will serve on the project’s Review Committee each year with an eye toward aligning new lesson proposals with the existing Carpentries curriculum. One potential project outcome will be a series of new lessons for possible integration with Software, Data, or Library Carpentry curricula. A broader goal of the project is for librarians to increase their aptitudes in the principles and practices of open science, so that they can provide instruction to researchers and better support faculty by advocating and teaching open and transparent techniques.

Planning for Lesson Program Governance Committees

Mon, 21 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

In January 2023, The Carpentries will call for community leaders to volunteer to join Lesson Program Governance Committees for Software Carpentry, Library Carpentry, and Data Carpentry.

Where We Have Been

The Carpentries was formed in January 2018, after Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry merged to form a single organisation. Our third lesson program, Library Carpentry, joined in November that year, and the structure of the organisation has remained relatively stable ever since. Before the merger, Software Carpentry & Data Carpentry had Steering Committees, which combined into a single entity when the two organisations agreed to merge, and became the first Executive Council of The Carpentries, following an election of new members in late 2017.

Library Carpentry’s Journey: Seeding the Future

Wed, 28 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Since 2018, Library Carpentry has been on a fruitful trajectory of growth and expansion. Fueled by a generous Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) grant awarded to the California Digital library, we have advanced the scope, adoption, and impact of Library Carpentry across the nation. Community partnerships have formed with libraries at academic institutions both in the US and around the globe, creating a rich and collaborative Library Carpentry community and making computational skills training widely available to librarians and researchers across disciplines. Supplemental funding by the IMLS has supported a growing number of Carpentries workshops and instructor training opportunities as well as a membership scholarship program to reach new and diverse library communities and consortia.

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.

Integration and reuse of Library Carpentry content into curricula

Mon, 08 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

By Jeff Oliver, Julie Goldman and Konrad Förstner

There is a growing need to teach students professional data handling skills. Luckily, nobody has to start from scratch for this. While the lessons of The Carpentries including the Library Carpentry lesson program are designed to be taught as defined combinations in two-day workshops, they can be reused in other contexts. In this blog post members of the Library Carpentry community describe how they include Library Carpentry lessons in academic curricula and use the training methods to teach computational skills to students.

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.

Announcing Library Carpentry efforts with the Network of the National Library of Medicine

Mon, 21 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000

We are pleased to announce our efforts to build the data skills of information professionals through our relationship with the Network of the National Library of Medicine (NNLM). NNLM members will make use of the skills taught in Library Carpentry (LC) workshops to benefit health, health information, and biomedical research communities.

The NNLM Training Office (https://nnlm.gov/nto) at the Eccles Health Sciences Library - University of Utah will work with The Carpentries to bring core lessons of Library Carpentry virtually to NNLM. In addition to virtual Library Carpentry workshops, The Carpentries will train NNLM members as Library Carpentry instructors, and pilot additional curriculum in the online environment.

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.

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.

Developing Data Skills at Macquarie University Library

Tue, 25 Jun 2019 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

By Grai Calvey, Fiona Jones and Heather Cooper

In 2016, Macquarie University delivered a Data Science and eResearch Platform Strategy. In response, the Library embarked on a series of initiatives including:

Developing workshops to improve the data skills of all our library staff
To grow confidence when engaging in data science practice, eResearch conversations and the support of researchers

Our three goals were to:

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!

The Carpentries in the Classroom

Tue, 22 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

By Denice Adkins

Incorporating The Carpentries into my Curriculum

As a Library and Information Science (LIS) professor at University of Missouri, one of my concerns is that students get a mix of theoretical knowledge and practical learning to help them through the rest of their graduate program and in the workplace. As a veteran of Library Carpentries Instructor Training, I knew I wanted to do some sort of Carpentries-related instructional component in my class, but I also knew that the classroom has constraints that a dedicated Carpentries session does not have. This blog post describes my experience with adding a Carpentries lesson to one of my classes in Fall 2018 semester.

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 HackyHour at Curtin University Library

Wed, 12 Dec 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

By Janice Chan

Starting in 2017, Curtin University Library in Perth, Western Australia hosted a series of Library Carpentry workshops that were well attended. Staff feedback suggested that they would like to learn more and apply these new skills to their day-to-day work. The Library looked to Software Carpentry and borrowed the HackyHour concept, to create a space where staff could continue to apply what they’ve learned. Library HackyHour at Curtin University Library happens every second Thursday, in the Library Makerspace, from 12:00 to 13:00.

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.

Data in the desert

Wed, 12 Sep 2018 00:00:00 +0000

By Jeff Oliver

Back by popular demand, the University of Arizona Libraries held its second Library Carpentry workshop on 6-7 August, 2018. Braving the intense desert heat, learners from the University of Arizona Libraries and Arizona State University Library showed up to learn about research computational tools and best practices in dealing with data.

The workshop included 21 learners, five instructors, and two helpers, representing a total of nine departments from the two universities.

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.

The Strategic Value of Library Carpentry and The Carpentries to Research Libraries

Wed, 22 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

By Elaine L. Westbrooks

The Data Science Community Newsletter, a helpful resource by Laura Noren and Brad Stanger, helps us track all the data science initiatives sweeping through higher ed. Brown, Harvard, NYU, Stanford, UC Irvine, UIUC, University of Michigan, and others have launched data science initiatives in the past few years and have been announced in each newsletter.

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:

Eight Days, Four Workshops, Two Islands, One Earthquake

Wed, 18 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

By Belinda Weaver

Teaching four Library Carpentry ’express’ workshops within eight days might sound quite taxing but the enthusiasm of the people I taught made it pretty easy. I also had some help from Jonah Duckles with workshop one at the University of Otago in Dunedin (this formed part of the Dunedin ResBaz event) and from Aleksandra Pawlik with the workshop at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch.

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.)

Pancakes on a Stick, and Other Things I Learned at UCLA

Mon, 04 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

By Juliane Schneider

It was not my best teaching effort. But it was one of my best learning experiences, and for an instructor, that’s a maybe selfish but definitely great outcome. For me.

I learned that the UCLA campus is truly gorgeous, and their campus catering serves delicious coffee and pastries. I learned that engaged learners can save you. I learned that these people were so into the workshop that most of them showed up for the entire Friday - a Friday before a three-day holiday weekend, possibly the best altmetric ever for interest in a workshop. I also learned about the mechanics of advanced whiteboard technology (wheels).

Opening discussions about Library Carpentry being a Lesson Organisation with The Carpentries

Mon, 21 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

On 1 January, 2018, Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry officially merged to form a new project called The Carpentries.

The original projects remain as distinct lesson entities, but governance, staffing, assessment, and a range of other matters now come under the merged identity - The Carpentries - which is typified by the new website and handbook.

Many in our community might have heard of Library Carpentry, a project that began when Dr. James Baker and others adapted Software Carpentry workshop materials to teach librarians software and data skills at a London workshop in 2015.

Opening discussions about Library Carpentry being a Lesson Organisation with The Carpentries

Mon, 21 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

By Tracy Teal and Belinda Weaver.

On 1 January, 2018, Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry officially merged to form a new project called The Carpentries.

Have your say

Fri, 18 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

By Belinda Weaver

The Library Carpentry governance group has created a governance repository on GitHub to list members, meeting minutes, and other things relevant to the future of Library Carpentry.

See the minutes of our May meeting.

The group meets monthly on the second Monday/Tuesday of the month (date and time depending on time zones).

Asking for your input

We want to deal with issues of relevance to this community. Feel free to suggest agenda items on our governance call etherpad.

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 at The University of Melbourne

Fri, 11 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

Post by Belinda Weaver.

Peter Neish and I taught a one-day Library Carpentry workshop to around 24 library staff at the University of Melbourne on 4 May.

We covered jargon busting, regular expressions for pattern matching, the Unix shell, and OpenRefine. This was a fairly ambitious program for a single day, but we managed to get through it, losing only a little skin as we tore through the shell lesson. Things went a little off the rails when the main projector started switching on and off randomly. This resulted in a total rearrangement of the room with a subsequent loss of visibility for some learners.

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.

Library Carpentry Governance - An Update

Tue, 20 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Eight of us from Australia, the UK, the US, Canada, and South Africa met last week via zoom to discuss taking the Library Carpentry project forward.

We discussed the creation of a new website to replace this one, talked about what constitutes a Library Carpentry workshop, discussed who can teach the material, and and started thinking about what kind of governance structure we need to lead the work from now on. There was an update on the status of the IMLS-funded Library Carpentry Coordinator role to be based at CDL.

Skills Training for Librarians: Expanding Library Carpentry

Mon, 06 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Post from the University of California Curation Center of the California Digital Library

In today’s data-driven, online and highly interconnected world, librarians are key to supporting diverse information needs and leading best practices to work with and manage data. For librarians to be effective in a rapidly evolving information landscape, training and professional development opportunities in both computational and data skills must be available and accessible.

Library Carpentry: Update from the Community Calls

Tue, 17 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

Community members came together on 10-11 October for two calls about the future direction of Library Carpentry.

You can see the discussions from those calls on the calls etherpad.

It was great to have such a good roll-up for both calls, and we managed to make some important decisions about the future.

Website redesign

We voted to move ahead with Richard Vankoningsveld’s proposed redesign of the existing Library Carpentry website. John Chodacki would prefer the logo be white or grey rather than yellow, and Richard still has some work to do to get the blog to render in the same Agency theme.

Helping the Helper - practical advice for Library Carpentry Helpers

Fri, 04 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

Post by Claire Wallnutt

A couple of months ago my line manager asked if I would be interested in helping out at an upcoming workshop our Library was helping to deliver. The workshop was entitled Library Carpentry. The first thing I asked was “is this to do with the Library Furniture Working Group?” A fair response if you ask me, as we do have a Library Furniture Working Group tasked with the job of creating a functional space (complete with said furniture) for our now empty Microfiche room. He explained it had nothing to do with carpentry actually, but was a software skills workshop aimed at information professionals borne from the Software Carpentry Foundation. Relieved, and with the image of me whittling a new piece of library furniture fading, I agreed to help.

Library Carpentry at the University of Sussex

Mon, 17 Jul 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

Post by James Baker

Last Wednesday 14 Librarians from 8 libraries in the Brighton area convened at the Sussex Humanities Lab for a Library Carpentry workshop. The session was organised by the University of Sussex Library and colleagues from there were out in force both to instruct and as helpers. The workshop covered Regular Expressions, Shell, Git (in a short introductory session organised by local company Serano), and OpenRefine.

Teaching Library Carpentry at the New Librarians' Symposium

Thu, 06 Jul 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

Post by Carmi Cronje

My colleague Fiona Jones and I recently taught a workshop called Introduction to the Library Carpentry Toolbox at the National Library Australia (NLA) for the ALIA New Librarians’ Symposium (NLS).

The New Librarians’ Symposium is held every two years - aimed at LIS and GLAMR students, managers, mentors, coders, hackers and more. This year’s was themed DIY Library Career, and held in Canberra 23rd-25th June. It was our first time at NLS so we weren’t sure what to expect, but it didn’t take long to get a sense of the positive environment outlined in their Inclusion Statement.

Library Carpentry chatrooms proliferate

Mon, 03 Jul 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

After the massive success of the 2017 global sprint, the Library Carpentry community decided it was time for create new chatrooms to handle the increasing volume of posts.

There are now three rooms - the Lobby which is a bit of a social, ‘meet-and-greet’ kind of place; lesson-dev for discussing lesson ideas, planning and maintenance; and a third room, workshops, for questions, discussions and debriefs about workshops past and upcoming.

The Endless Sprint

Wed, 07 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The recent Library Carpentry sprint exceeded my expectations, and then some!

Around 107 people signed up on our organising etherpad, either to work remotely or to contribute at one of the 13 sites in seven countries around the globe. That’s a big step up from the 2016 numbers of six sites and around twenty people working on the material.

The sprint was organised as part of the 2017 Mozilla Global Sprint. Library Carpenters comprised around one-sixth of that sprint workforce, and our more than 850 GitHub events - pull requests, forks, issues raised, commits and merges - outpaced the rest of the field by miles.

Three Instructors, Two Coasts and One Spatula

Wed, 17 May 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

In the space of a year, interest and participation in the Library Carpentry community has exploded like an amoeba who over-ate at an algae banquet and attempted one too many pseudopods.

For Library Carpentry, though, this is a good thing; the pseudopods are propelling us forward across institutions, disciplines, and continents. The community, grounded in collaborative tools like Github and Gitter (I always want to type Glitter) is coalescing around lesson development and holding new workshops. Why is the buzz so strong? I think it’s a combination of relentless energy from people like Belinda Weaver and Tim Dennis (to name just a few), the acceptance and active encouragement of new people who want to contribute in some way, and the mutual recognition by all of us that in any one thing, we are all absolute beginners, and we all give each other permission to be terrible until we aren’t.

Library Carpentry sprint in June

Wed, 26 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Lesson maintenance is necessarily an ongoing task, especially with fledgling lessons where workshops taught reveal gaps or issues with existing material. Development of new lessons may also spring from the same source. Who hasn’t thought, after teaching: “Wouldn’t it be great if we could add x?”

But lesson maintenance and new development are probably best done as a shared activity, which is why the Library Carpentry community has signed up to work on lessons intensively during the 2017 Mozilla Science Lab global sprint on 1-2 June. Check out our sign up etherpad for information about our plans.

What's new in Library Carpentry

Thu, 06 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

There is lots of current Library Carpentry activity. Our big news is Library Carpentry won the British Library Labs award in 2016 for teaching and learning. The prize money has since been used to fund Library Carpentry workshops in the UK, with one in Sheffield just completed, and another upcoming in Taunton in June.

Tim Dennis (UCSD) and I are running Software Carpentry instructor training for 30 librarians in Portland, Oregon, on 4-5 May, after csv,conf. I am then teaching Library Carpentry at MIT with Juliane Schneider (ex-UCSD, now working for Harvard) on 15 May.

Announcing the CarpentryCon Proposal

Wed, 04 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

To date, we have not yet had an opportunity to bring together all the members of our communities. Enter: CarpentryCon! We are proposing a two-and-a-half day conference, tentatively held in May 2017 at the University of Michigan.

We envision an event that brings together members of the Carpentry community, including instructors, partners, advocates, and staff, together with people sharing similar interests from around the globe. We will have a “come and learn” format that is different from most conferences with session on topics such as teaching methods, curriculum development, community organization, and leadership skills. Opportunities will be provided for participants to come together informally to share stories about challenges and successes. There will be at least one session where attendees can share how they have incorporated Carpentry techniques into their own research and teaching, and/or how they have grown their local Carpentry community. The final list of sessions will be determined by the program committee in consultation with the community, balancing “who wants to learn what?” with “who’s willing to teach what?”.

Instructor Training for Library Carpentry

Thu, 08 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We are pleased to announce that we are partnering with csv,conf (a community conference for data makers everywhere) to run an instructor training class specifically geared for people interested in Library Carpentry. The class will take place in Portland, Oregon, on May 4-5, 2017; for details, please see the full announcement.

Library Carpentry workshop call

Tue, 01 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

Library Carpentry is software skills training aimed at the needs and requirements of library professionals (that is, coding and data manipulation that goes beyond the use of familiar office suites). It is made by librarians, for librarians to help you:

automate repetitive, boring, error-prone tasks
create, maintain and analyse sustainable and reusable data
work effectively with IT and systems colleagues
better understand the use of software in research
and much more..

Training takes places in face-to-face workshops where one or more of the developed modules are taught. Modules are also made available online (CC BY, published via GitHub Pages) for self-directed study or for adaption and reuse by library professionals.

Library Carpentry is One Year Old

Sat, 22 Oct 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The indefatigable James Baker recently wrote a blog post summarizing what’s happened with Library Carpentry in the past year. It summarizes their lessons, their workshops, how Library Carpentry is managed, and much more. Announcements and initial discussion take place on Gitter, and new members are welcome to join–please check them out.

Library Carpentry is coming to Africa

Fri, 19 Aug 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

The first Library Carpentry workshop in Africa will be held in Pretoria, South Africa on August 25 & 26. Here is the site for the workshop which is being generously hosted by CSIR.

This Library Carpentry workshop is supported by NeDICC, North-West University and Talarify.

Teaching Library Carpentry to Librarians at UCSD

Wed, 17 Aug 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I sort of knew what I was getting into. I’d done the excellent instructor training in February at UC Davis, which is a good thing, because I didn’t know the first thing about instruction. I didn’t know the first thing about organizing workshops, either, but I figured what the hell; my colleague and partner-in-crime Tim Dennis had reserved the big conference room in our library, which is really hard to get. If you’re in academia you know the first rule, which is never waste a reserved prime conference room. With lots of prompts and help from my colleague Tim Dennis, we put together a Library Carpentry workshop at UC San Diego.

Library Carpentry in Toronto

Sat, 30 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

On July 28-29, a group of volunteers from the University of Toronto’s libraries ran a two-day workshop for thirty-five of their fellow librarians. People came from as far away as Sudbury, Ottawa, New York City, and even Oregon to spend two days learning about:

regular expressions,
XPath and XQuery,
OpenRefine,
programming in Python, and
scraping data off the web.

While there were inevitably some hiccups getting software installed on learners’ machines, everything ran pretty much on schedule, and the instructors got through most of the material they had planned to cover. What was particularly nice was the way the modules fit together: the Python lesson closed by showing people how to write programs using regular expressions, while the scraping lesson referred back to the XPath material.

Library Carpentry workshop at James Cook University, Townsville

Fri, 29 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We held a two-day Library Carpentry workshop at James Cook University, Townsville on 14–15 July, 2016. The workshop was a first on several fronts - the first course run by Software Carpentry trainers Jay van Schyndel and Daniel Baird from the JCU eResearch Centre and the first Library Carpentry course run at JCU. Collin Storlie, the local QCIF eResearch Analyst, agreed to help out too.

How was the workshop proposed?

Teaching Library Carpentry

Wed, 22 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

## Teaching Library Carpentry

I ran a two-day ‘Library Carpentry’ workshop for librarians at The University of Queensland on 13-14 June. The class covered

jargon-busting and data structures
writing and using regular expressions
command line tools to find data in files
version control
OpenRefine for data cleanup

Eighteen people from six organisations attended, out of a pool of 26 who intially expressed interest. (In the small lab I was using, I only had room for 18.)

Library Carpentry - update

Tue, 07 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

Last week a global team of volunteers spent two days improving and enriching the original Library Carpentry materials. Belinda Weaver describes this AMAZING effort in a blog post.

The upshot of this is that the original materials have been superseded. To find the latest Library Carpentry lessons, please now head to https://github.com/data-lessons where the community will continue to update, maintain, and improve the lesson materials as they as used and reused across the globe!

Library Carpentry - Fin, for now

Thu, 03 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

Library Carpentry was an exploratory programme of four three-hour software skills sessions focused on the needs and requirements of the library professionals. For further details, see the outline post. Sessions were held on Monday the 9th, 16th, 23th, and 30th of November 2015 at City University London. We thank the Centre for Information Science for generously agreeing to host Library Carpentry.

Library Carpentry is far from over, but we now into a phase of reflection and planning. If you are interested in what happened during this exploratory run, I direct your attention to two blog posts:

Library Carpentry - Where and When

Sat, 03 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

Library Carpentry is an exploratory programme of four three-hour software skills sessions focused on the needs and requirements of the library professionals. For further details, see the outline post.

Library Carpentry sessions will be held on Monday the 9th, 16th, 23th, and 30th of November 2015. Sessions will start at 1730 and conclude by 2030. They will be held at City University London in room C304 (Tait Building, third floor, room 4). Directions are available on the City website. We thank the Centre for Information Science for generously agreeing to host Library Carpentry.

Software Skills Training for Librarians - Programme outline and FAQ

Fri, 03 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

In one way or another librarians play a crucial role in cultivating world-class research. And in most disciplinary areas today world-class research relies on the use of software. Software Carpentry offers introductory software skills training with a focus on the needs and requirements of research scientists. Library Carpentry offers comparable introductory software training with a focus on the needs and requirements of the library professionals.

Library Carpentry

Fri, 17 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We wrote about the digital skills classes at the British Library last October. We were therefore very pleased to see that James Baker, a Software Sustainability Institute Fellow, is piloting a new program called Library Carpentry. The first run will take place in November 2015 at the Centre for Information Science at City University London; the program will consist of four three-hour sessions, each for 40-50 participants. The announcement has more details, including a call for participants and another for volunteers. Please check them out, and lend a hand if you can.

Teaching Librarians at Harvard

Mon, 02 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Last weekend, we ran a bootcamp at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astronomy aimed primarily at librarians. It was a bit of a new venture for us, and there were some hiccups (some things were taught too fast, some instructors used too much jargon), but overall it seems to have gone well, and we hope to do more like this soon.

Gerry Walden: Bootcamp...for Librarians!
Philip Guo: Teaching Librarians Programming
Matthew Rutley: Teaching Python at Harvard with Software Carpentry