Our Audience
Library Carpentry speaks to those working with information and data:- Who want to explore this material to determine if it is helpful or relevant to their work
- Who face new challenges surrounding data such as learning new tools and practices
- Who want to improve their workflows and reduce time consuming tasks
- Who need to gain familiarity and comfort with language surrounding data
- Who would like to collaboratively develop lesson material around information and data
- Who are generally interested in data scholarship
- Who are looking for a community where they can discuss data related challenges
Library Carpentry can help you to…- Manipulate, transform, and analyse data
- Make data-driven decisions
- Have better conversations about research data
- Automate repetitive tasks
- Promote use of data and services
- Learn computational approaches
- Support open research and data scholarship
- Foster cultural change within organizations
- Comply with new strategic plans and mission statements
- Create new opportunities and to reach out to new communities
The Library Carpentry community includes, but is not limited to, the following general profiles:
Someone who is wishing:
To understand how information and data are created and used both internally and externally at an organization to develop reports that help improve the quality of their data and services. (Reporting)
To learn about new technologies and approaches that can help improve metadata and data cleaning and linking workflows to benefit discovery of resources in their communities. (Curation)
To develop digital preservation skills to enable and ensure access to reformatted and born digital content. (Preservation)
To gain background knowledge on advances in information and data technologies and approaches to foster greater interaction, collaboration, and better assistance with community members around technical questions and challenges. (Information Desk)
To learn useful methods and technologies and in turn teach their communities about them to enable their work with information and data. (Instructional)
To develop skills and expertise to participate on technical projects that enhance and support digital services. (IT)
User stories exercise
- Manipulate, transform, and analyse data
- Make data-driven decisions
- Have better conversations about research data
- Automate repetitive tasks
- Promote use of data and services
- Learn computational approaches
- Support open research and data scholarship
- Foster cultural change within organizations
- Comply with new strategic plans and mission statements
- Create new opportunities and to reach out to new communities
The Library Carpentry community includes, but is not limited to, the following general profiles:
Someone who is wishing:
To understand how information and data are created and used both internally and externally at an organization to develop reports that help improve the quality of their data and services. (Reporting)
To learn about new technologies and approaches that can help improve metadata and data cleaning and linking workflows to benefit discovery of resources in their communities. (Curation)
To develop digital preservation skills to enable and ensure access to reformatted and born digital content. (Preservation)
To gain background knowledge on advances in information and data technologies and approaches to foster greater interaction, collaboration, and better assistance with community members around technical questions and challenges. (Information Desk)
To learn useful methods and technologies and in turn teach their communities about them to enable their work with information and data. (Instructional)
To develop skills and expertise to participate on technical projects that enhance and support digital services. (IT)
User stories exercise
To understand how information and data are created and used both internally and externally at an organization to develop reports that help improve the quality of their data and services. (Reporting)
To learn about new technologies and approaches that can help improve metadata and data cleaning and linking workflows to benefit discovery of resources in their communities. (Curation)
To develop digital preservation skills to enable and ensure access to reformatted and born digital content. (Preservation)
To gain background knowledge on advances in information and data technologies and approaches to foster greater interaction, collaboration, and better assistance with community members around technical questions and challenges. (Information Desk)
To learn useful methods and technologies and in turn teach their communities about them to enable their work with information and data. (Instructional)
To develop skills and expertise to participate on technical projects that enhance and support digital services. (IT)
The following exercise can be helpful in understanding the drivers and needs of the Library Carpentry audience:
As a ___ I need ___ in order to / so that ___
List of examples:
- As a subject specialist librarian, I need an intro to data so that I can participate better in conversations with researchers
- As a subject specialist librarian, I need to understand OCR so that I can better help a researcher digitise material for their research project
- As a librarian, I need data skills so I can advise on the scope and requirements of digital scholarship projects
- As a librarian, I need data skills so I can promote the use of our collections and services
- As a librarian, I need to learn the shell so that I can automate daily/regular tasks
- As a librarian, I need to learn OpenRefine so that I can transform and manipulate reports more efficiently
- As a science librarian, I need to learn R so that I can teach an introduction to researchers/lab
- As a librarian, I need to learn R so that I can analyse and visualise library data
- As a librarian, I need to learn about digital scholarship tools so that I can understand and assist placements by students at the library
- As a subject specialist librarian, I need to learn about open science so that I can support the library strategic plan
- As an acquisitions librarian, I need data skills so I can make informed collection development decisions
- As an archivist, I need to learn ORC/digitization skills to better understand the digital archiving that is being asked of me by researchers.
- As a student, I need to learn about best data practices so that I can begin a project that centers on data I would like to work on
Demographic information about the Library Carpentry community:
Learning about your audience, particularly demographic data, can greatly aid how you can communicate and teach effectively. Review the list of demographic resources as you get to know the Library Carpentry audience and community.
- Data.usa: Librarians
- 2017 ALA Demographic Study
- Libraries are not for everyone until librarianship can be for everyone
Job descriptions from the Library Carpentry community:
Job descriptions can also be invaluable to understanding the duties and tasks associated with the audience roles in the Library Carpentry community. Please see the list of job descriptions for more background.