Library Carpentry focuses on building software and data skills within library and information-related communities. Our goal is to empower people in these roles to use software and data in their own work and to become advocates for and train others in efficient, effective and reproducible data and software practices.
Training takes place in face-to-face workshops. Lesson materials are all available online, under a CC BY license, for self-directed study or for adaptation and re-use.
Library Carpentry was originally developed with support of the Software Sustainability Institute and has been incorporated as a Lesson Program with The Carpentries. Like Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry, it maintains its own lessons, and has a Governance Committee and a Curriculum Advisory Committee.
An official Library Carpentry workshop must include our core lessons. All workshops that are reported to Library Carpentry are listed in the 'Upcoming Workshops' section of this site and range from 1-day to multi-day. Ideally attendees will bring their own laptops to workshops so that skills learned can be replicated after the workshop without the need for any additional setup or software installation.
Workshops are run by a team. Ideally this will consist of:
A Library Carpentry lesson is a set of training materials that can be used to run hands-on training or as self-directed learning. Each lesson comprises several episodes, is interactive, works across Windows, macOS, and Linux operating systems (with all setup instructions included) and has a combination of follow-the-leader sections and exercises that map to library practices and workflows. Lessons introduce software and data concepts relevant to people working in library- and information-related roles and are based on open source software. Data used in exercises is library-related, e.g. bibliographic data.
Official Library Carpentry workshops must have at least one certified instructor present running the workshops. To be a Library Carpentry instructor, and instructor for other Carpentries lesson organizations, you must undertake and complete The Carpentries Instructor Training. Instructors must be prepared to observe The Carpentries Code of Conduct in workshops. Library Carpentry lesson materials are freely available under a permissive open license and available for the wider community to use for Library Carpentry-based workshops.