Report back from University of Calgary Libraries

Workshop and instructor training for librarians

By Chris Erdmann

Taylor Family Digital Library at University of Calgary

Thanks to the University of Calgary Libraries

Thanks to the University of Calgary Libraries for recently hosting both a Library Carpentry Workshop (28-29 August) and a Carpentries Instructor Training for Librarians (30-31 August). The events were possible thanks to support from John Brosz, Renee Reaume, Susan Powelson, Ingrid Reiche, Paul Pival, Calum Center, and University of Calgary Libraries staff. The Taylor Family Digital Library’s state-of-the-art teaching and collaboration spaces were perfect for The Carpentries hands-on pedagogical approaches used by the trainers and instructors, Juliane Schneider, Karen Word, and Chris Erdmann.

Library Carpentry Workshop

Before the workshop was planned, the University of Calgary Libraries was exploring how their metadata services could be expanded to support research on campus while also improving and automating their workflows. Library Carpentry’s core objectives and curriculum seemed like a perfect fit for their staff to gain hands-on experience with tools and approaches that could further the initiative.

University of Calgary Libraries staff, along with librarians from neighboring institutions, busted jargon, and learned about regular expressions, UNIX Shell, OpenRefine, and GitHub. Workshop participants also learned about the overall context of how these tools and approaches can help them in their work. As is often the case, a number of the participants appreciated learning OpenRefine while some were positive about the UNIX Shell lesson.


University of Calgary Library Carpentry The Carpentries Instructor Training Workshop