CarpentryCon Session Etherpad and Information. This session was led by Rabea Müller 1 and Konrad Förstner 1,2
Context
In 2018, we saw the need and opportunity for librarians to use Wikidata as an auxiliary resource to facilitate their work. On the other hand, the information skills of librarians can also help to improve the data in the Wikidata platform. With this realisation Library Carpentry Wikidata Lesson was born.
A first surcharge for this took place in 2018 at WikiCite, where the design of the workshop was planned for the first time in a session. Afterwards the planning continued at the ZB MED team.
CarpentryCon @ Home
This year, CarpentryCon @ Home gave us the platform to expand the lesson and take it to the next level, since not all episodes have been polished to a diamond. Therefore we used CarpentryCon @ Home for another Lesson Sprint and took part at the Lightning Talks to spread the word.
The lesson sprint was a great opportunity for us. On one hand, people who were not familiar with Wikidata took part. They gave us a perspective on what information is still needed for people who are not deep into the subject. On the other hand, with the participation of developers, we were able to redesign a complete episode that covers the need for automatic data import into Wikidata. During the sprint, many issues were closed on the GitHub repo and even more issues were created. As you can see, development is not over yet and the best is on its way!
The next step for us was to generate more awareness of the lesson. Through the Lightning Talks, we had a large audience of people who built lessons themselves. They got to know our lesson and asked important questions that drove our development. As an extra on top of that, we were also able to gain insights into exciting lessons that are currently being launched!
CarpentryCon @ Home was a complete success for us, and as already mentioned we still have a lot to do. So if you are interested in supporting our lessons, check out the Library Carpentry Wikidata Lesson GitHub repository or contact us if you have any questions or ideas!
Thanks to The Carpentries Team for organising the event and all participants for the great journey! See you soon :)
1 ZB MED - Information Centre for Life Sciences, Cologne, Germany
2 TH Köln - University of Applied Sciences, Cologne, Germany