Contribute to our Project

The first edition of Digital Scholarship & Data Science Topic Guides for Library Professionals, launched at the LIBER Annual Conference in Summer 2025, draws heavily on the existing skills framework and topics covered in the British Library’s Digital Scholarship Training Programme, as well as those recommended by attendees of development workshops hosted by LIBER working groups throughout 2023/2024.

There are several ways to contribute to the ongoing update and future development of this resource.

Feel free to contact Nora McGregor if you’re keen to discuss!

Help us with our wishlist!

Contribute a new Topic Guide (individually or in collaboration with others). Choose from our current wishlist or propose a new one. Contact digitalresearch@bl.uk with your idea or submit an Issue and we’ll help you get started right away!

NOTE: Our current wishlist for future editions includes but is not limited to topics such as:

  • Climate Change and Sustainability
  • Cultural Competency & Ethics in Digital Methods
  • Demystifying Computational Environments for Digital Scholarship
  • Digital Scholarship/Data Science Project Management, Evaluation and Impact Assessment
  • Digital Storytelling
  • Foundation models: When and why to use LLMs or SLMs
  • Research Data Management
  • Wikimedia

Suggest edits to an existing Topic Guide

Know of a good case study, report or community of practice that LIBER members should know about? Open a new Issue or add to the discussion on existing Issues on the project Github. If you’re new to GitHub don’t worry, we have a Topic Guide for that: GitHub: How to navigate and contribute to Git-based projects!

Join a working group and help with ongoing maintenance and review

We view this resource as capturing a snapshot in time and will endeavour to fully review all content a minimum of once annually to check for link rot, and content relevancy. The project team editors are committed to making quick fixes when raised throughout the year, while formal sprints and reviews coinciding with LIBER Annual Summer Conference and Winter events will be used for soliciting new content and undertaking more complex updates to the resource each year and creating new editions as necessary. Join one of the LIBER Working Groups Digital Scholarship and Digital Cultural Heritage WG or Data Science in Libraries (open to all staff of LIBER member institutions) to keep up with the developments and help out with ongoing maintenance of this project!

Take part in a Writing Sprint!

We held four online Topic Guide Sprints in 2024.

  • Tuesday 14 May 2024
  • Tuesday 03 June 2024
  • Tuesday 08 October 2024
  • Tuesday 05 November 2024

To be notified of future sprints check back here for dates/times or join one of our working groups and we’ll email out the details!

Preparing for a sprint:

  1. Please have a quick read through the Welcome and Topic Guide pages to familiarise yourself with this resource and its purpose.
  2. When you Register you’ll see a list of our latest Topic Guides on our wishlist. Please check off any and all Topic Guides you would be happy to work on during the day of the sprint. On the day each attendee will focus on writing just one Topic Guide however. The information you provide before the sprint will help us organise this ahead of time so that as many Topic Guides as possible have at least one dedicated author.
  3. Please have a quick read through the Author Guidance and Style Guide section.
  4. We’ll be in touch after we receive your registration to send you more details and useful information ahead of the sprint so look out for our email! If you are sent a copy of the Topic Guide Template (Google Doc) that corresponds to your topic of choice ahead of time, add your name to the header, and feel free to add notes or even make a start on drafting your guide before the sprint day if you’re keen!

What to expect on the day:

A two hour writing sprint will generally follow this format:

  1. Welcome and participant introductions (10 minutes)
  2. Overview of the project & explanation of how the day will run (15 minutes)
  3. Allocation and confirmation of individual Topic Guide Authorship for the day (15 minutes): As a group we’ll go over the wishlist and all participants will be given access to their particular Topic Guide google doc template they’ll be using during and after the sprint.
  4. Writing Phase (60 minutes): You’ll have an hour to begin writing your respective guide in your Google Doc template. If more than one participant are working together on a topic we can provide breakout rooms so that you can discuss amongst yourselves how to break up the work, and share ideas as you go along. You can have your camera/mic on or off during this time and co-chairs will be on hand to answer any questions or give advice on topics.
  5. Wrapping Up & Logging progress through Github Issues (15 minutes): We have provided an Issue Template which is pre-formatted as a Topic Guide submission checklist and will walk participants through the process of opening a new issue for your draft submission. Please fill in the issue template and provide the necessary information relating to where your draft submission is currently at. Once the issue is saved, it can continue to serve as a space to continue discussion of the ongoing status of your submission and log updates where necessary, including notifying us of when it is fully ready for final review by maintainers.
  6. Closing Remarks & Next Steps (5 minutes)

After the sprint:

During the sprint, you’ve drafted your Topic Guide in a Google Doc. This Google Doc can continue to serve as a ‘living document’ following the sprint until you feel the content is ready to be published. Throughout this process, we will use your Github issue to maintain an overview of the docs in terms of their status and action points so please keep this updated. Each Topic Guide will be allocated a specific Maintainer contact (one of the co-chairs) who will be in touch and work with you to see the process through to completion. You may request placing your Google Doc under restricted access if you wish. We will not do this by default, but we respect that some contributors would like to keep drafts private until fully ready for submission.

When your Topic Guide is ready for our review in Google Docs, please let us know by logging an update over on Github as a comment on the Issue stating this. You can also tag the maintainers so they receive a notification as well. Maintainers will generally work with you on the final edits necessary for the submission through track changes and comments within the Google Doc itself. Once these have all been resolved maintainers will log a status update in the GitHub issue.