Software and Data Carpentry
The Carpentries Foundation
The Carpentries teaches foundational coding and data science skills to researchers worldwide. Hands-on workshops cover basic concepts and tools, including program design, version control, data management, task automation, and fundamental data skills. Participants are encouraged to help one another and to apply what they have learned to their own research problems and workflows. Currently there are three curricula, Software Carpentry (SWC), Data Carpentry (DC), and Library Carpentry (LC). There are new communities such as High Performance Computing that are working to join the other groups.
The Carpentries at OU: A History
In the summer of 2013, the first Software Carpentry workshop was held on campus hosted the High Performance Computing group OSCER and the College of Atmospheric Sciences. Shortly afterwards, a second workshop was offered for the Biology Department and the Oklahoma Biological Survey. The workshops gained popularity and are now hosted and sponsored by the OU Libraries to advance its mission to serve the research and academic units across the Norman campus.
The University of Oklahoma joined the Software Carpentry Foundation (SCF) in October of 2015. Members of the original consortium lead by the OU Libraries included the College of Arts and Sciences, the Vice President for Research, the Oklahoma Biological Survey, and the South Central Climate Science Center. In January, 2018, Data and Software Carpentry merged to form a new organization called The Carpentries.
Currently, three general beginner workshops are held during the fall and spring semesters. Locations of the workshops have been primarily held at the Bizzell Memorial Library in the HCLC Classroom LL123, and The Core and the Innovation Hub's active learning classroom, both located on OU's South Campus.
Current OU Sponsors
Topics for Carpentry Workshops
Software Carpentry
the Unix shell ⇒ automate repetitive tasks
Git & GitHub ⇒ version control to track and share work
Python or R ⇒ programming languages to build modular code
Data Carpentry
spreadsheets ⇒ Best practices
OpenRefine ⇒ Tidy Data, data cleaning
SQL ⇒ using databases to manage and interrogate data
Analytics & Visualization using R ⇒ Code provided for simple plots
Future Workshops
Schedule and registration for Carpentries Workshops can be found on the UL Events page. You can receive notifications of when new registrations open by subscribing to the e-mail list below.
E-mail For future notification of Carpentry Events
A listserv mail group has been created for those who are interested in receiving more about up-coming research workshops. Questions and discussion about the Carpentries and/or the lessons taught can be sent here.