Library Carpentry: Update from the Community Calls
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.
This theme is designed for projects rather than for blogs but, with some tweaking, this should not be a problem. So things are looking good!
We are also hoping to be able to use the librarycarpentry.org domain which is currently owned by Software Carpentry.
New funded Library Carpentry position based at CDL
John Chodacki filled us in on the recently awarded IMLS grant which will support the work of Library Carpentry both within the US (for example, fostering local communities of new instructors in underserved areas such as the Southeast US) and globally. Using the grant, California Digital Library will hire a person on a two-year contract, with a remit of growing the community, especially the instructor pool, and responding to the ever growing demand for workshops. There will also be work to develop and finish lessons created during the 2016 and 2017 sprints.
Governance
Since there was general agreement across both calls for eventual merger with the Carpentries (which will themselves merge in January 2018), it was decided that the Library Carpentry community should elect an interim Steering Committee to guide us through that process. The proposal was to have around five to seven people (to prevent tied votes) and to revisit the Committee post-merger.
Several people expressed interest in serving on such a committee. Belinda Weaver will dig up the Software Carpentry Steering Committee’s terms of reference and propose something similar for Library Carpentry’s interim committee. We will then make a proposal about that, ask for feedback, and then try to organise a vote.
The people interested were:
- John Chodacki (US)
- Belinda Weaver (Australia)
- Cam Macdonell (Canada)
- Owen Stephens (UK)
- Tim Dennis (US)
- Scott Peterson (US)
- Juliane Schneider (US)
It would be good to have a representative from Africa as there has been considerable activity in South Africa around Library Carpentry. New Zealand has also been involved.
Regular calls
We also decided to have monthly community calls to ensure we all stay in touch and people know what is going on.