Intro to Excel and OpenRefine

Virginia Tech

August 15, 2024

9:00-5:00

Instructors: Nathaniel Porter, Corinne Guimont

Helpers: Kara Long, Mariana Castañeda, Jesse Sadler

This is the workshop template. Delete these lines and use it to customize your own website. If you are running a self-organized workshop or have not put in a workshop request yet, please also fill in this workshop request form to let us know about your workshop and our administrator may contact you if we need any extra information. If this is a pilot workshop for a new lesson, set the `pilot` field to `true` in `_config.yml`. For workshops teaching a lesson in The Carpentries Incubator, remember to uncomment the `incubator_lesson_site`, `incubator_pre_survey`, and `incubator_post_survey` fields in `_config.yml`

General Information

The Carpentries project comprises the Software Carpentry, Data Carpentry, and Library Carpentry communities of Instructors, Trainers, Maintainers, helpers, and supporters who share a mission to teach foundational computational and data science skills to researchers.

Want to learn more and stay engaged with The Carpentries? Carpentries Clippings is The Carpentries' biweekly newsletter, where we share community news, community job postings, and more. Sign up to receive future editions and read our full archive: https://carpentries.org/newsletter/

Library Carpentry is made by people working in library- and information-related roles to help you:

automate repetitive, boring, error-prone tasks
create, maintain and analyze sustainable and reusable data
work effectively with IT and systems colleagues
better understand the use of software in research
and much more...

Library Carpentry introduces you to the fundamentals of computing and provides you with a platform for further self-directed learning. For more information on what we teach and why, please see our paper "Library Carpentry: software skills training for library professionals".

Who: The course is for people working in library- and information-related roles. You don't need to have any previous knowledge of the tools that will be presented at the workshop.

Where: 2104 University Mall, Blacksburg, VA AND Online. Get directions with OpenStreetMap or Google Maps.

When: August 15, 2024; 9:00-5:00 Add to your Google Calendar.

Requirements: Participants must bring a laptop with a Mac, Linux, or Windows operating system (not a tablet, Chromebook, etc.) that they have administrative privileges on. They should have a few specific software packages installed (listed below).

Accessibility: We are committed to making this workshop accessible to everybody. The workshop organizers have checked that:

The room is wheelchair / scooter accessible.
Accessible restrooms are available.

We are dedicated to providing a positive and accessible learning environment for all. We do not require participants to provide documentation of disabilities or disclose any unnecessary personal information. However, we do want to help create an inclusive, accessible experience for all participants. We encourage you to share any information that would be helpful to make your Carpentries experience accessible. To request an accommodation for this workshop, please fill out the accommodation request form. If you have questions or need assistance with the accommodation form please email us.

Glosario is a multilingual glossary for computing and data science terms. The glossary helps learners attend workshops and use our lessons to make sense of computational and programming jargon written in English by offering it in their native language. Translating data science terms also provides a teaching tool for Carpentries Instructors to reduce barriers for their learners.

Contact: Please email ndporter@vt.edu for more information.

Roles: To learn more about the roles at the workshop (who will be doing what), refer to our Workshop FAQ.

Code of Conduct

Everyone who participates in Carpentries activities is required to conform to the Code of Conduct. This document also outlines how to report an incident if needed.

Surveys

Please be sure to complete these surveys before and after the workshop.

Pre-workshop Survey

Post-workshop Survey

Schedule

Day 1

Before Starting	Pre-workshop survey
09:00	Jargon Busting, A Computational Approach, Introduction to Working with Data (Regular Expressions)
10:30	Morning break
12:00	Lunch break
13:00	The Unix Shell
14:30	Afternoon break
16:00	Wrap-up
16:30	END

Day 2

09:00	Introduction to Git
10:30	Morning break
12:00	Lunch break
13:00	OpenRefine
14:30	Afternoon break
16:00	Wrap-up
16:30	Post-workshop survey

Setup

To participate in a Library Carpentry workshop, you will need access to software as described below. In addition, you will need an up-to-date web browser.

We maintain a list of common issues that occur during installation as a reference for instructors that may be useful on the Configuration Problems and Solutions wiki page.

The Bash Shell

Bash is a commonly-used shell that gives you the power to do simple tasks more quickly. Please find setup instructions in the lesson.

OpenRefine

OpenRefine is a tool to clean up and organize messy data. Please find instructions to install it and the data used in the lesson in the lesson.

Git

Git is a version control system that lets you track who made changes to what when and has options for easily updating a shared or public version of your code on https://github.com.

Follow the instructions on the lesson to install Git on your system.

You will need an account at github.com for parts of the Git lesson. Basic GitHub accounts are free. We encourage you to create a GitHub account if you don't have one already. Please consider what personal information you'd like to reveal. For example, you may want to review these instructions for keeping your email address private provided at GitHub. You will need a supported web browser.