About Library Carpentry
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What is Library Carpentry?
Library Carpentry is software and data skills training. Originally based on lessons developed by The Carpentries, Library Carpentry has evolved, and aims to help library professionals work more efficiently, and potentially teach the skills they have learned to colleagues, students, and researchers. 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.
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Who owns Library Carpentry?
Though Library Carpentry is not currently tied to any institution or person, the project has opened discussions with The Carpentries (Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry) about becoming a lesson organisation under The Carpentries' umbrella. Library Carpentry will, however, remain a distinct lesson project that welcomes participation and contributions from its community.
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What is a Library Carpentry Workshop?
A Library Carpentry workshop comprises hands-on training where one or more of the currently developed lessons are taught. The issue of exactly what comprises an 'official' Library Carpentry workshop is under current discussion. Please have your say by contributing to the issue. Workshop organisers may choose to teach from less 'stable' lessons. Ideally attendees will bring their own laptops to workshops so that skills learnt can be replicated after the workshop without the need for any additional setup or software installation.
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How are Workshops Organised?
Workshops are run by a team. Ideally this will consist of:
- a Host, who is the principal local contact for the workshop and who negotiates with Instructors about what lessons will be taught
- a Lead Instructor and other Instructors who teach the lessons and lead the practical exercises
- Helpers who provide assistance to learners during practical sessions
- Workshops can be any size but it is recommended that the helper-to-learners ratio not exceed 1:8.
To maintain the quality of Library Carpentry workshops, it is highly recommended that a Carpentries-certified instructor be present at each workshop. For more about Carpentries instructor training, see this curriculum.
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What is a Lesson?
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 3-4 sections, is interactive, works across Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux operating systems (with all setup instructions included) and has a combination of follow-my-leader sections and exercises that map to library practices. Lessons introduce software and concepts relevant to librarians and are based on open source software. Data used in exercises is library-related, e.g. bibliographic data.
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Who is an instructor?
Currently, a Library Carpentry instructor is anyone willing to lead a Library Carpentry workshop. Instructors must additionally be prepared to observe The Carpentries Code of Conduct in workshops. In future, we hope all lead instructors for workshops will have undertaken The Carpentries Instructor Training.
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How is Library Carpentry Managed?
Library Carpentry was developed and is now maintained by volunteers. All activity is voluntary. An interim governance group has been formed to lead the project. For more on that, see this blog post, and the committee's minutes. Management and maintenance are distributed. Each lesson is maintained by one of more individuals responsible for co-ordinating maintenance of that lesson. Changes to lessons are managed using GitHub Issues. Announcements and initial discussion take place in our chatroom. New members are welcome to join this community.
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Past workshops
