Thank you all!

In this post, Chris Erdmann reflects on his time as Library Carpentry Community & Development Director ahead of his last day.

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.

I will continue to be a member of the community, as a Maintainer on lessons, as a member of the Advisory Group, and will continue to teach and participate in discussions, so this is not goodbye. Instead, I will close by sharing some of the fun stories I have had with community members this past year and a half:

Tim Dennis reached out to me right when I started and invited me to teach a workshop at UCLA with him, and then weeks later, Tim and Jamie Jamison helped with hosting the Mozilla Global Sprint from the UCLA Library Data Science Lab. I think all of us were on a sugar high during the sprint.

CarpentryCon was a rush, meeting many members of the community, but I will never forget my reenactment of Run Lola Run through the streets of Dublin with David Kane to get to the CarpentryCon dinner on time or my bus ride through the Irish countryside with Scott Peterson and Daniel Bangert.

Thanks to Birgit Schmidt for inviting me to LIBER 2018 to speak about Library Carpentry and The Carpentries. This later led to a Carpentries Instructor Training at LIBER 2019 at UCD Library in Dublin. After LIBER, I was able to join Katrin Leinweber, Mateusz Kuzak, Konrad Förstner and others at the TIB Hannover FAIR Data & Software Carpentries-Based Workshop. This workshop was an inspiration in so many ways!

At the August 2019 University of Calgary Instructor Training, I met so many people that would ultimately become community members helping Library Carpentry grow. I handed out Effin Birds mugs as prizes and was finally able to see Lake Louise with Juliane Schneider. Oh Canada, you’re beautiful.

Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) inspired a global sprint in November 2018, for us to try out a new format, Top 10 FAIR Data & Software Things. The event brought in new members and allowed us all to develop guides on what FAIR meant according to disciplines and/or topics. It was a fun experience ending the day talking to colleagues in Australia and waking up the next day talking to colleagues in Europe.

MTSU invited us to do a three-day workshop at the start of 2019. Somehow we pulled it off with Juliane Schneider and I recovering from the flu and one of our instructors getting the flu just before the workshop. Anna Oates was able to avoid the flu with her super human immune system and delivered her first of many amazing training sessions. Of course, we had to go and see the Parthenon replica in Nashville.

"Nashville Parthenon" by schnaars is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

“Nashville Parthenon”by schnaars is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

In February, ARDC hosted a Library Carpentry workshop tour of Australian cities. They continue to be such amazing supporters of The Carpentries along with so many others there. A special thanks to Natasha Simons for showing me Australia along the way.

Electronic Resources & Libraries hosted it’s first Data Science in Libraries track in March 2019 inspired by The Carpentries efforts. It is great to see them offer the track once more, to have a Carpentries table at the exhibitor showcase, and to hopefully run workshops at the 2020 conference.

Somewhere in all of this my wife and I had a baby and everyone has been supportive throughout. I remember one conversation though before I went on paternity leave with Yared Abera Ergu about work and family. It was one of those conversations about life that you have with community members on the side that makes working in this community so special.

Thank you all! I hope I have helped you as much as you have helped me. I will see you out there in the community.


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