Go it Alone

You are the Digital something at your library. You work on web projects. You support open access/ open education/ open (meta)data/ open source initiatives. You are excited about the possibilities, but limited by your IT systems and resources. You remember a little about XML or HTML/CSS from school. You can’t choose (or can’t afford) a “platform.” You are given a wide scope, but no budget. You go it alone.

Here’s what you will need:

• A decent computer with a text editor, web browser, and terminal
• The ability to install free and open source software

Here’s what you will learn:

• Computing fundamentals
• Command line utilities
• Plain text editing
• Git version control
• GitHub collaboration
• Web accessibility
• Markup languages (Markdown, HTML)
• Structured data formats (CSV, JSON, YAML)

Sounds good. What’s the catch?

You are now the marketer of the service you provide. You are now the project manager. You are now the web designer. You are now the web developer. You are now the systems admin/DevOps engineer. You are now the maintainer.

Will it be OK? Probably! Here’s what it takes:

• A patience with error messages
• A tolerance for documentation
• A comfort with uncertainty
• A willingness to learn
• (and maybe a love for puzzles)

Lib-Static is a community focused on data portability, code reusability, and project maintainability. More importantly, Lib-Static is a community dedicated to supporting colleagues on their learning paths.

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contributor: Chris Diaz (Northwestern University Library)
last update: 2021-08-04