Data Carpentry Digital Humanities

University of Edinburgh

Online

Nov 25 - 27

9:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m.

Instructors: Lucia Michielin, Matthew Hamilton, Mario Antonioletti, Geoff Lee

Helpers: Bailey Harrington, Robert Nagy, Jen Daub, Charlotte Desvages, Alejandro Delgado, David McKain

General Information

Data Carpentry develops and teaches workshops on the fundamental data skills needed to conduct research. Its target audience is researchers who have little to no prior computational experience, and its lessons are domain specific, building on learners' existing knowledge to enable them to quickly apply skills learned to their own research. Participants will be encouraged to help one another and to apply what they have learned to their own research problems.

For more information on what we teach and why, please see our paper "Good Enough Practices for Scientific Computing".

Who: The course is aimed at graduate students and other researchers. You don't need to have any previous knowledge of the tools that will be presented at the workshop.

Where: This training will take place online. The instructors will provide you with the information you will need to connect to this meeting.

When: Nov 25 - 27. 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 dedicated to providing a positive and accessible learning environment for all. Please notify the instructors in advance of the workshop if you require any accommodations or if there is anything we can do to make this workshop more accessible to you.

Contact: Please email matt.hamilton@ed.ac.uk 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.


Collaborative Notes

We will use this collaborative document for chatting, taking notes, and sharing URLs and bits of code.


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 Data Organization in Spreadsheets
10:30 Morning break (15 min)
10:45 Data Organization in Spreadsheets
11:45 Lunch break
12:30 OpenRefine for Data Cleaning
15:00 END

Day 2

09:00 Python for Humanities: Introduction
10:30 Morning break (15 min)
10:45 Python for Humanities: Continued
11:45 Lunch break
12:30 Python for Humanities: Continued
15:00 END

Day 3

09:00 Python for Humanities: Continued
10:30 Morning break (15 min)
10:45 Python for Humanities: Conclusion
11:45 Lunch break
12:30 Data Management with SQL
15:00 END
After Finishing Post-workshop survey

Syllabus


Setup

To participate in a Data Carpentry workshop, you will need access to the software 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.

Install the videoconferencing client

If you haven't used Zoom before, go to the official website to download and install the Zoom client for your computer.

Set up your workspace

Like other Carpentries workshops, you will be learning by "coding along" with the Instructors. To do this, you will need to have both the window for the tool you will be learning about (a terminal, RStudio, your web browser, etc..) and the window for the Zoom video conference client open. In order to see both at once, we recommend using one of the following set up options:

This blog post includes detailed information on how to set up your screen to follow along during the workshop.

Helpful Shortcuts

A list of shortcuts for common Zoom functions you will use during the workshop.

Function mac windows
Mute/unmute audio ++A Alt+A
Start/stop video ++V Alt+V
Start/stop screen share ++S Alt+Shift+S
Display/hide participants panel +U Alt+U
Show/hide in-meeting chat panel ++H Alt+H
Raise hand/lower hand +Y Alt+Y
Enter or exit full screen ++F Alt+F

Overview

This workshop is designed to be run on your laptop. First, you will need to download the data we use in the workshop. Then, you need to install some software. After following the instructions on this page, you should have everything you need to participate fully in the workshop!

Data

The data required is contained in this link to a .zip file

This will automatically download all of the files to your default download directory as a single compressed (.zip) file. To expand this file, double click the folder icon in your file navigator application (for Macs, this is the Finder application).

The data for this lesson is a part of the Data Carpentry Humanities workshop. It is a teaching version of the EEBO/TCP metadata catalogue. The data in this lesson is a subset of the teaching version that has been intentionally ‘messed up’ for this lesson.

Software

Software Install Manual Available for Description
Spreadsheet program Link Link Linux, MacOS, Windows Spreadsheet program for organizing tabular data.
OpenRefine Link Link Linux, MacOS, Windows  
Python See install instructions below.   Linux, MacOS, Windows  
SQLite Browser Link      

Spreadsheet program

OpenRefine

Python

Jupyter Shortcuts

This is a list of common operations you will use in your Jupyter Notebooks

Function mac windows
Run Cells + CTRL+ENTER
Run Cells and Select Below + SHIFT+ENTER
Run Cells and Insert Below + ALT+ENTER
Toggle Line Numbers +L SHIFT+L
New Cell Above a a
New Cell Below b b
Delete Cell d d d d
     

SQL

Congratulations! You are now ready for the workshop!