About us

Library Carpentry develops and teaches workshops on the computational skills needed to efficiently handle and explore large volumes of information. Our mission is to empower people working in library- and information-related roles to use software and data in their own work and to become advocates for and train others in efficient, effective and reproducible data and software practices. The target audience of Library Carpentry is librarians and other information professionals with little to no previous experience with computational methods.

Data has become accessible in greater volumes than ever before, and continues to grow in size and complexity. Librarians and others in information-related professions have an essential role to play in helping their communities overcome the obstacles that a flood of information can present, and to take advantage of the availability of so much data. Simultaneously, concepts and practices from software development and data science have the potential for tremendous impact in the work of libraries and other information-related communities. However, there exists a large gap between the need for these skills and the availability of training to provide them.

Since 2014, Library Carpentry has been teaching people working in library- and information-related roles how to cut through the jargon of software development and data science, and apply concepts and methods from these fields to library tasks. Our hands-on workshops introduce best practices for using data structures to organise data and programmatic methods to explore it. After participating in one of our workshops, learners will be ready to work effectively with researchers, IT, and systems colleagues, and automate repetitive, error prone tasks. Most of our workshops are aimed at learners with little or no previous experience with software and data methods.

A workshop can’t teach you everything you need to know about software and data methods for information management and publication, however it drastically reduces the barrier to entry and imparts the skills for continued learning and engagement. Our ultimate goal is to enable impactful sharing of knowledge by creating strong information-related communities and empowering them to teach and promote efficient, effective and reproducible data and software practices.