What's new in Library Carpentry

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.

We have helpers for that workshop from Boston University, Harvard and Yale.

We are running a Library Carpentry project again this year as part of the annual Mozilla Science Lab global sprint on 1-2 June. This is our sign up etherpad. So far, we have five sites committed to host people working on the sprint. People are also signing up to work remotely. We will stay in touch via the chatroom and daily hangouts.

We plan to work on SQL, Python, and web scraping lessons, rebuild our main Library Carpentry page, and to work out a way to record and track workshops better. We are also hoping to make Library Carpentry work for archivists. We are currently seeking feedback on what archivists want through this form.

I have been invited by the Australian Society of Archivists to teach a Library Carpentry workshop as a tie-in to their annual conference in September, so I hope to incorporate some of the suggestions already made.

Here is more information on what we hope to tackle in the sprint.

So far, there have been about 15 Library Carpentry workshops since last year’s global sprint provided the impetus for this new community. Our chat room is very active and issues are constantly debated on GitHub.

Australia, Canada, the US, the Netherlands, the UK and South Africa are the main places for activity with New Zealand about to join the bandwagon. There is an upcoming workshop in South Africa in May, as well as plans for one in Ottawa a bit later on in the year. Hopefully there will be many more workshops in the US after the Portland instructor training mints 30 new instructors.

How can you get involved?

• Join the sprint - even if only to say hi or suggest things we should do
• Pop into the chatroom
• Request a workshop through the contact form on this page
• Follow us on Twitter.