Library Carpentry Survey 2021

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Survey results

The Library Carpentry Advisory Group (LCAG, https://librarycarpentry.org/advisory/) conducted a survey with the aim to gain a better understanding of librarians and other information professionals in terms of their training needs, impacts resulting from training and further engagement with The Carpentries community. The survey has been developed by Birgit Schmidt and Konrad Förstner.

The survey was disseminated through various channels, including The Carpentries mailing lists and social media channels, regional mailing lists (e.g. Australia, Asia, Africa), and direct contacts to former workshop participants and instructors (via host institutions).

The survey consisted of 28 questions overall, and was open for responses between 2021-06-14 and 2021-08-25. Overall 113 responses were collected; all respondents shared some information about their experiences with The Carpentries. About two thirds contributed as an individual (79 responses), 25 as a representative of a member institution and further 9 respondents did not specify a role.

## [1] "Just receive e-mails"                                               
## [2] "Want to be more involved (mostly host \"unofficial\" workshops)"    
## [3] "We've hosted one carpentries workshop"                              
## [4] "I only participated as an individual"                               
## [5] "We organise and host \"based on carpentries\" workshops/hacky hours"

Overall, 79 respondents reported that their library already engages with The Carpentries, and several do so in multiple ways. In addition, 19 respondent libraries are not involved yet but they would like to learn more.

Regarding their job roles, respondents were asked to choose up to three work areas.

108 respondents shared information on their job roles. `

Of all respondents, 86 had attended at least one Carpentries workhop. Most popular was Library Carpentry (73 respondents), followed by Software Carpentry (42 respondents) and Data Carpentry (38 respondents). Out of these about every second (45 respondents) had attended at least two types of Carpentry workshops.

Application and engagement

Adopted routines

Respondents were asked to assess to what degree they have adopted certain behaviours or routines as a result of having completed a Carpentries workshop. The scale of responses was a 7-point Likert scale between never (0), sometimes (3, mid-point) and regularly (6), not all levels were spelled out in the survey questionnaire. The additional levels can be read as very rarely (1), rarely (2), often (4), very often (5).

##                                                 Item        0         1
## 1             Reorganising and cleaning spreadsheets 21.64948  6.185567
## 2                              Using version control 28.86598  9.278351
## 3                Transforming workflows into scripts 50.51546 12.371134
## 4                     Scraping or mining web content 56.25000 14.583333
## 5 Improving data management and project organisation 24.74227  7.216495
## 6                        Using programming languages 35.41667 10.416667
## 7                                       Reusing code 34.37500 11.458333
## 8                       Creating processable reports 45.83333 17.708333
##           2        3         4         5         6
## 1  3.092784 22.68041 10.309278 13.402062 22.680412
## 2  6.185567 22.68041  9.278351  8.247423 15.463918
## 3 10.309278 12.37113  8.247423  3.092784  3.092784
## 4  6.250000 14.58333  5.208333  3.125000  0.000000
## 5  7.216495 12.37113 10.309278 11.340206 26.804124
## 6 11.458333 17.70833  7.291667  9.375000  8.333333
## 7  9.375000 16.66667 14.583333  8.333333  5.208333
## 8  7.291667 15.62500  8.333333  3.125000  2.083333

Benefits, follow-up learning and further engagement

Suggestions and final comments

Respondents shared their ideas on what other topics the Library Carpentry curriculum could include and how Library Carpentry could support them in their work. At the end of the survey, a few respondents shared a couple of final comments.

Quotes

Several respondents shared information on how they personally benefitted from their workshop participation or further engagement with The Carpentries. A few were confused by the question.

Demographics of respondents’ institutions