Brown University Library

October 21-22, 2019

9:00 am - 4:30 pm

Instructors: Ashley Champagne, Joshua Dull

Helpers: Kelsey Sawyer, Justin Uhr

General Information

Registration: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/library-carpentry-providence-2019-tickets-66673503243

This workshop is organized and sponsored by NEASIST, Brown University Library, NNLM-New England Region, and NESCLiC. Our instructors are all volunteers, your registration costs help reimburse their lodging and travel.

Library Carpentry is made by people working in library- and information-related roles to help you:

Library Carpentry introduces you to the fundamentals of computing and provides you with a platform for further self-directed learning. For more information on what we teach and why, please see our paper "Library Carpentry: software skills training for library professionals".

Who: The course is for people working in library- and information-related roles. You don't need to have any previous knowledge of the tools that will be presented at the workshop.

Where: Rockefeller Library, 10 Prospect Street, Providence, RI 02912. Get directions with OpenStreetMap or Google Maps.

When: October 21-22, 2019. Add to your Google Calendar.

Requirements: Participants must bring a laptop with a Mac or Windows operating system (not a tablet, Chromebook, etc.) that they have administrative privileges on. They should have a few specific software packages installed (listed below).

Code of Conduct: Everyone who participates in Carpentries activities is required to conform to the Code of Conduct. This document also outlines how to report an incident if needed.

Accessibility: We are committed to making this workshop accessible to everybody. The workshop organizers have checked that:

Materials will be provided in advance of the workshop and large-print handouts are available if needed by notifying the organizers in advance. If we can help making learning easier for you (e.g. sign-language interpreters, lactation facilities) please get in touch (using contact details below) and we will attempt to provide them.

Contact: Please email joshua.dull@yale.edu for more information.


Surveys

Please be sure to complete these surveys before and after the workshop.

Pre-workshop Survey

Post-workshop Survey


Schedule

Day 1

09:00 Introductions & Jargon Busting
10:30 Morning break
10:45 Regular Expressions
12:00 Catered Lunch Break
13:00 OpenRefine for Librarians
14:30 Afternoon break
16:00 Wrap-up
16:30 END

Day 2

09:00 Tidy Data & Spreadsheets
10:30 Morning break
12:00 Catered Lunch Break
13:00 Into to GitHub & GitHub Desktop
14:30 Afternoon break
15:30 Wrap-up
16:00 END

We will use this collaborative document for chatting, taking notes, and sharing URLs and bits of code.


Syllabus

Introduction to Data

  • Intro to Data
  • Jargon Busting
  • Keyboard Shortcuts
  • Plain Text Formats
  • Naming Files
  • Regular Expressions
  • Reference...

Introduction to Tidy Data

  • Using Spreadsheets for Data Wrangling
  • Formatting Data in Spreadsheets
  • Dates as Data
  • Quality Assurance
  • Exporting Data
  • Reference...

Version Control with Git

  • Creating a repository
  • Configuring Git
  • Recording Changes to Files: add, commit, ...
  • Viewing State Changes with status
  • Working on the Web: clone, pull, push, ...
  • Where to Host Work, and Why
  • Reference...

OpenRefine

  • Introduction to OpenRefine
  • Importing Data
  • Basic Functions
  • Advanced Functions
  • Reference...

Setup

To participate in a Library Carpentry workshop, you will need access to the software described below. In addition, you will need an up-to-date web browser.

We maintain a list of common issues that occur during installation as a reference for instructors that may be useful on the Configuration Problems and Solutions wiki page.

GitHub Desktop

GitHub Desktop is a version control system that lets you track who made changes to what when and has options for easily updating a shared or public version of your code on github.com. You will need a supported web browser.

You will need an account at github.com for parts of the GitHub Desktop lesson. Basic GitHub accounts are free. We encourage you to create a GitHub account if you don't have one already. Please consider what personal information you'd like to reveal. For example, you may want to review these instructions for keeping your email address private provided at GitHub.

GitHub Desktop for Windows can be downloaded directly from the GitHub site. Detailed installation instructions can be found here.

GitHub Desktop for Mac can be downloaded directly from the GitHub site. Detailed installation instructions can be found here.

Text Editor

When you're writing code, it's nice to have a text editor that is optimized for writing code, with features like automatic color-coding of key words. The default text editor on macOS and Linux is usually set to Vim, which is not famous for being intuitive. If you accidentally find yourself stuck in it, hit the Esc key, followed by :+Q+! (colon, lower-case 'q', exclamation mark), then hitting Return to return to the shell.

nano is a basic editor and the default that instructors use in the workshop. It is installed along with Git.

Others editors that you can use are Notepad++ or Sublime Text. Be aware that you must add its installation directory to your system path. Please ask your instructor to help you do this.

nano is a basic editor and the default that instructors use in the workshop. See the Git installation video tutorial for an example on how to open nano. It should be pre-installed.

Others editors that you can use are BBEdit or Sublime Text.

OpenRefine

For this lesson you will need OpenRefine and a web browser. Note: this is a Java program that runs on your machine (not in the cloud). It runs inside a web browser, but no web connection is needed.

Check that you have either the Firefox or the Chrome browser installed and set as your default browser. OpenRefine runs in your default browser. It will not run correctly in Internet Explorer.

Download software from http://openrefine.org/

Create a new directory called OpenRefine.

Unzip the downloaded file into the OpenRefine directory by right-clicking and selecting "Extract ...".

Go to your newly created OpenRefine directory.

Launch OpenRefine by clicking openrefine.exe (this will launch a command prompt window, but you can ignore that - just wait for OpenRefine to open in the browser).

If you are using a different browser, or if OpenRefine does not automatically open for you, point your browser at http://127.0.0.1:3333/ or http://localhost:3333 to use the program.

Check that you have either the Firefox or the Chrome browser installed and set as your default browser. OpenRefine runs in your default browser. It may not run correctly in Safari.

Download software from http://openrefine.org/.

Create a new directory called OpenRefine.

Unzip the downloaded file into the OpenRefine directory by double-clicking it.

Go to your newly created OpenRefine directory.

Launch OpenRefine by dragging the icon into the Applications folder.

Use Ctrl-click/Open ... to launch it.

If you are using a different browser, or if OpenRefine does not automatically open for you, point your browser at http://127.0.0.1:3333/ or http://localhost:3333 to use the program.