Library Carpentry sprint, 2 Oct, 2017 - LiASA

02 Oct 2017

The Library Carpentry sprint is part of the Library and Information Association of South Africa 2017 Conference, which will take place on 2 October, 2017 in Johannesburg. For those new to the field, a sprint is like a hackathon - it is a way to get people working together to create, update or extend open projects like Library Carpentry. We’ll use this etherpad to organize the sprint.

We are using this sprint to give participants an introduction to Library Carpentry, cover how the community works and how to get involved. We’ll also provide details on how to host and organise a workshop with hands-on exercises in setting up a workshop website. Following workshop operations, we’ll shift to explore how Library Carpentry lessons are collaboratively created and maintained. We’ll amend, update, extend and improve the existing Library Carpentry lessons. Along the way, you’ll learn how to collaborate in GitHub and make your own blog. Finally, we’ll conclude with the a preliminary outline for a follow-up workshop during the first quarter of 2018.

We welcome contributions from librarians, archivists, information professionals, digital humanities researchers … anyone who wants to contribute to building the lessons and this burgeoning community.

Workshop goals

Intro to Library Carpentry
A warm and welcoming environment (code of conduct)
How the voluntary community works and getting involved
Working with content in GitHub (or using Markdown and Jekyll)
Workshop operations and hands-on with creating a workshop website
Creating and collaborating on lessons in GitHub (issues, commits, pull requests)
Looking for improvements treasure hunt
Planning your next Library Carpentry begins now

Requirements

Having a laptop for this workshop will help – we intend to do hands-on activities as part of the sprint
A GitHub account https://github.com/join

Not sure what Library Carpentry is? Check out our ‘front page’. This provides links to the published lessons. For the ‘back end’, repository view of the lessons, check out the lessons prefixed library- or dh- here.

How will the sprint work?

We will use our Gitter to chat with each other. Library Carpentry has 3 gitters:

The Lobby - General topical disuccsions on library carpentry
Lesson Development - discussions related to creating and maintaining our lessons
Workshops - a chat for putting on and feedback around workshops

We will also this etherpad http://pad.software-carpentry.org/lc-south-africa-sprint to share links & notes and organize work. Join the chatroom at any time using your GitHub username or your Twitter handle.

The sprint hashtag is #lc-sa2017. Please use this to tie tweets together, and also use Library Carpentry’s Twitter handle, @LibCarpentry, if you can.

Next steps

Put on a workshop - no matter how big or small

You can do this! Teaching to learn is the new norm in Academia
The Workshops gitter is there to help
Follow the Software Carpentry Operations manual: https://software-carpentry.org/workshops/operations/
Pick a room, get a date and make it happen

Work on existing lessons by

submitting pull requests to suggest changes (please keep each pull request small - one or two changes only per PR - to make them easier to manage for maintainers)
raising issues for discussion/amendment against specific lessons using the Issues tab on each lesson
chatting with others in the chatroom or via the daily catchups and video calls
working through lessons with colleagues as a way of familiarising yourself with the material
discussing the project with colleagues, especially about how you might bring Library Carpentry to your institution
identifying any confusing gaps or assumptions in lessons so we can make the lessons more learner-friendly.

Lesson Maintainers

This is a list of people who maintain each Library Carpentry lesson. If you are editing a lesson, be sure to check in with them throughout the sprint. Volunteers to help maintain a lesson after the sprint are always welcome!