Invitation to a 2-day virtual workshop on Data Librarianship
DECEMBER 5, 2022
Overview
Technological advancements have always had tremendous impact on professional practices including librarianship. With deeper progression into the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), data and data management have increasingly become significant necessitating new roles such as data librarianship. Data librarianship is concerned with the management of research data as well as the utilisation of data as a resource in the production of new knowledge through further manipulation and research. Within the information profession, there is a growing demand for data services and research data management at libraries/information centres in universities, government public institutions and corporations.While these services are already in demand across many library and information institutions in Africa, the supply of data librarians with adequate skillsets are not keeping up with the growing demand.
The workshop
The workshop takes place on 8-9 December, 2022 and is a build up on the webinar organized in November, 2022. The workshop is being organised collaboratively by the Library Education and Training Section (LETIS) of the African Library and Information Associations and Institutions (AfLIA) supported by the Department of Library and Information Science, University of the Western Cape.
Through hands-on virtual training, information professionals will develop capacity in the area of research data management. Workshop participants will understand the acquisition, management and retrieval of both aggregated numerical information (statistics) and disaggregated one (data).
Coupled with another in-person workshop during the 5th AfLIA Conference and 7th African Library Summit in Accra, Ghana, the training sessions are designed to shape and further the agenda for the sustainability of African information professionals by leading them to understand open source applications as alternatives to proprietary software solutions for data librarians.
Participation
Participants will need a PC (desktop or laptop) to attend. It’s also important that they have administrative privileges on those PCs (this is necessary for the installations). Please note that this is a non-negotiable criteria for participation.
Date: Thursday and Friday, 8-9 December, 2022
Time: 8:00am UTC | 9:00am WAT | 10:00am CAT | 11:00am EAT
Registration
This is a free workshop. After completing the registration form, you will receive a confirmation notification via email with details of how to join the workshop
Carefully read the section on Technical Requirements to help you prepare adequately for this webinar.
Facilitator
Dr. Oghenere Salubi is an educationalist, data scientist and librarian who made a combinational transition to computational social sciences, and data analytics in the broader social sciences and humanities disciplines. A Senior Lecturer at the University of the Western Cape’s Department of Library and Information Science, Dr. Salubi also volunteers as a Data instructor for The Carpentries, where he teaches computational research data management and analytical tools. His current teaching and research interests are in the areas of data stewardship, knowledge organisation and data management, digital humanities, and ICTs in LIS.
Schedule
| Time (GMT/UTC) | DAY 1 | Time (GMT/UTC) | DAY 2 |
| Before start | Pre-workshop survey | 8:00 | Introduction to Git |
| 8:00 | Jargon Busting, A Computational Approach | 9:30 | First break |
| 9:20 | First break | 11:00 | Second break |
| 9:30 | Introduction to Working with Data (Regular Expressions) | 12:00 | OpenRefine |
| 11:00 | Second break | 14:00 | Wrap up |
| 12:00 | Data Organization in Spreadsheets | 14:30 | Post-workshop survey |
| 14:00 | Wrap up | 14:30 | END |
| 14:30 | END |
Technical Requirements
Upon registration, reminders will be sent to all registrants periodically. This webinar will be hosted on Zoom Conferencing Platform. Participants, who do not have Zoom on their mobile devices and or computers, need to download, install and create an account on Zoom ahead of time (CLICK TO DOWNLOAD). Webinar attendees are encouraged to join early, preferably 15 minutes before the start of the webinar, as one may need time launch the application. The speaker will use a webcam to connect with attendees. Audio and video for the session will be streamed over computer speakers. Attendees are therefore encouraged to connect with a headset or earpiece for maximum utility.
Further Details
Please visit the homepage for the workshop to learn more about the program’s resources (Git and OpenRefine), and other guidelines for set up. Click button below:
Contact
For further enquiries and any assistance concerning the workshop, please email OSalubi@uwc.ac.za