We are excited to announce that Chris Erdmann has been hired as the Library Carpentry Community and Development Director starting May 4, 2018.

Chris has worked in libraries for more than 21 years to integrate data management and workflows in database and library systems. Through training, consulting and tool development to build programs, he has tried to empower people in research and library communities to work effectively with data. Chris received his MLIS at the University of Washington iSchool while working at the University’s Technology Transfer Office, where he helped automate workflows and develop the unit’s web presence and analytics. He spent roughly ten years working alongside astronomers at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics to advance library data-mining and linking services, e.g. ESO Telescope Bibliography. Also during this time, he led an experimental training series called Data Scientist Training for Librarians (DST4L) geared towards teaching librarians data-savvy skills to help transform their library services to meet the needs of their research communities. He recently joined the Library Carpentry governance group.

He is a co-author with Matt Burton, Liz Lyon, and Bonnie Tijerina on the recent report Shifting to Data Savvy: The Future of Data Science In Libraries, where Library Carpentry and The Carpentries are highlighted as a necessary next step for libraries to advance their research services.

Chris will be working with the Library Carpentry community and The Carpentries to start mapping out the infrastructure for growing the community, formalizing lesson development processes, expanding its pool of instructors, and inspiring more instructor trainers to meet the demand for Library Carpentry workshops around the globe and thus reach new regions and communities.

This new position is funded by IMLS and hosted by the University of California Curation Center (UC3), the digital curation program of the California Digital Library (CDL). It is intended to support the work of the Library Carpentry governance committee on streamlining operations with The Carpentries, determining standard curriculum, growing instructor training for librarians and planning for community events like the upcoming Mozilla Sprint to update Library Carpentry materials. Chris will be helping to manage the sprint work in the northern hemisphere.

Chris is excited about advancing the profession and sees the Library Carpentry and The Carpentries communities as the perfect catalyst to do that. He is on Twitter as @libcce, on GitHub and on LinkedIn, and we’re very excited to welcome Chris to this role!

For more information on Library Carpentry:https://librarycarpentry.github.io Follow @libcarpentry on Twitter. For more information on UC3 and California Digital Library: http://uc3.cdlib.org Follow @caldiglib and @UC3CDL on Twitter.

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