Research Data Management Working Group

LIBER Webinar: Library Carpentry – Teaching Data Science Skills & Upcoming Instructor Training

Posted: 05-04-2019 Topics: Research Data Management

Nearly all academics use research software and 69% say their research wouldn’t be practical without it. As the use of technology in research increases, libraries have a new and essential role to play.

With appropriate training, libraries can effectively support the data science needs of their researchers. This is critical for the development of Open Science (as highlighted in the report of the European Commission’s Open Science Skills Working Group). 

This webinar on 8 April at 1500 CEST, hosted by Birgit Schmidt of LIBER’s Research Data Management Working Group, will feature speaker Christopher Erdmann. He will introduce The Carpentries: a non-profit organisation that trains people in software development and data science skills. One branch of this organisation, Library Carpentry, is focused on the needs of libraries. Chris will talk about the concept of Library Carpentry: what is taught, why and how, the impact it’s having, and what’s next.

We will also hear from Juliane Schneider, a Carpentries trainer. She will focus on the benefits of becoming a Library Carpentry instructor. Juliane will be one of the trainers present at a Library Carpentry Instructor Training on 24-25 June in Dublin. This workshop is organized by the Library Carpentry community, and they have kindly offered a discounted rate for staff working in LIBER libraries. No prior technical knowledge is necessary.

Speaker Biography

Christopher Erdmann is an author, developer, and experimenter in the areas of digital libraries, social networking, library UX, interactive technologies, bibliometrics, and data services in libraries. He is currently the Library Carpentry Community and Development Director at The Carpentries and the California Digital Library. Chris will be working with the Library Carpentry community and The Carpentries to start mapping out the infrastructure for growing the community, formalizing lesson development processes, expanding its pool of instructors, and inspiring more instructor trainers to meet the demand for Library Carpentry workshops around the globe and thus reach new regions and communities. He has previously worked for organizations such as North Carolina State University, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, European Southern Observatory, Supreme Court of the US, United Nations, University of Washington, Smithsonian, and CNET.

Juliane Schneider has 20 years’ experience in metadata, ontologies and discovery, Juliane Schneider has worked in start-ups, on Wall Street in an insurance library, at NYU medical center, for EBSCO publishing, and at UC San Diego in the Research Data Curation Program. Her longest stint at any job was the six years she spent at Countway Library as the Metadata Librarian, and now she has returned to Harvard as the Team Lead/Lead Data Curator for Harvard Catalyst.Her latest passion is for the instruction of librarians in data best practices and the tools used in data management. She is a certified instructor and trainer for The Carpentries, believing that well structured, reproducible data begins with understanding the tools and processes used to produce it (Bash, command line, regex, OpenRefine, Python, R). She has also been involved in Library Carpentry lesson development, especially for OpenRefine.

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