Summary and Setup

Library Carpentry aims to teach librarians, information professionals, and researchers basic concepts, skills, and tools for working with data so that they can get more done in less time, and with less pain. This lesson was designed to teach the principles of working with data in spreadsheets.

Getting Started

Library Carpentry’s teaching is hands-on, so participants are encouraged to use their own computers to insure the proper setup of tools for an efficient workflow. These lessons assume no prior knowledge of the skills or tools.

Prerequisites

This lesson requires working copies of the data, linked below, as well as a working spreadsheet program, such as Microsoft Excel, LibreOffice, or another program described below. To most effectively use these materials, install everything before working through this lesson.

For Instructors

If you are teaching this lesson in a workshop, please see the Instructor Notes.

Setup

Spreadsheets are useful for data entry and data organization, and some subsetting and sorting of the data as well as getting an overview of the data.

Software

To interact with spreadsheets, we can use LibreOffice, Microsoft Excel, Gnumeric, OpenOffice.org, or other programs. Commands may differ a bit between programs, but general ideas for thinking about spreadsheets is the same.

For this lesson, if you don’t have a spreadsheet program already, you can use LibreOffice. It’s a free, open source spreadsheet program.

Windows

  • Download the Installer
    Install LibreOffice by going to the installation page. The version for Windows should automatically be selected. Click Download. You will go to a page that asks about a donation, but you don’t need to make one. Your download should begin automatically.
  • Install LibreOffice
    Once the installer is downloaded, double click on it and it should install.

Mac OS X

  • Download the Installer
    Install LibreOffice by going to the installation page. The version for macOS should automatically be selected. Click Download. You will go to a page that asks about a donation, but you don’t need to make one. Your download should begin automatically.
  • Install LibreOffice
    The file LibreOffice_X.X.X_MacOS_x86-64 (whichever version of LibreOffice you have selected) should have been downloaded. Double click on this file, and LibreOffice will be installed.

Linux

  • Download the Installer
    Install LibreOffice by going to the installation page. The version for Linux should automatically be selected. Click Download. You will go to a page that asks about a donation, but you don’t need to make one. Your download should begin automatically.
  • Install LibreOffice
    Once the installer is downloaded, double click on it and it should install.

Data

Download this data file to your computer: training_attendance.xlsx. The file is an xlsx file that should automatically download. You may need to right click or control click in order to save the file (NOTE: In Safari, right click and select download linked file; in Chrome and Firefox, right click and select save link as). Make a note of the location (i.e the folder, your desktop) to which you save the file.