There is demand in the library community for skills that enable librarians to automate tasks, integrate versioning into workflows, and to clean and manipulate data. Whilst Software Carpentry offers this training with a focus on the needs and requirements of research scientists, the needs and requirements of library professionals are different.

In February I asked what Library Carpentry might look like and how best to spend my Software Sustainability Institute Fellowship figuring it out. The response from you, the community, was wonderful: you discussed the idea on Twitter, commented on this blog, sent links to resources and further reading, and offered to discuss further on Skype and in person (I've put together a Zotero library capturing much of this).

Following on from these discussion I am delighted to announce that Library Carpentry will take place in November 2015 at the Centre for Information Science, City University London. Library Carpentry will take the form of four three-hour sessions, open to around 40 to 50 participants. Each session will be lead by a session leader and will primarily involve participants working in groups from a worksheet with troubleshooting handled by skilled volunteers. The programme is likely to cover the counting and mining in the Unix shell, versioning with Git, and cleaning data with Open Refine, though this is subject to change based on the interests of participants and their pace of working. Places are free but booking will be essential.

Full details are available at the Library Carpentry website.

I am also delighted to announce that two calls are now open: a Call for Participants and a Call for Volunteers.

Call for Participants

If you want to come along or bring a group to Library Carpentry please register your interest by contacting James Baker or if you use GitHub by commenting on our Call for Participants thread.

Call for Volunteers

Library Carpentry needs skilled volunteers to lead sessions, support participants as they work through tasks, help answer questions participants may have, and to contribute to lessons plans as they develop. If you are interested in being a volunteer trainer at Library Carpentry contact James Baker or if you use GitHub comment on our Call for Volunteers thread.

Many thanks to Lyn Robinson and Ernesto Priego for agreeing to host Library Carpentry at Centre for Information Science, City University London, to Software Carpentry for their advice and for allowing us to use the 'Carpentry' moniker, and to the Software Sustainability Institute for supporting this activity. The Software Sustainability Institute cultivates world-class research with software. The Institute is based at the universities of Edinburgh, Manchester, Southampton and Oxford.

James Baker

Curator, Digital Research

@j_w_baker

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