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| Image credit: https://www.python.org/ |
How you ever heard of Python? This past week, I got to dabble a bit in coding a cute little program in Python. The purpose of my little program was to do a few healthcare-related conversions such as temperature, BMI and Mean Arterial Pressure. (This was for a health informatics course I'm taking.)
It was really fun and took me back to my computer science days when I studied a "few" programming languages to get that degree. Yes, I'm very multi-lingual...in computer languages, that is. I've been exposed to Basic, Pascal, Fortran, PL/I, COBOL, Assembler, C, C++ and Java. As a young computer teacher, I actually used to teach Basic, Pascal, COBOL and later on HTML and Javascript. So, Python took me back to my programming days which were really fun.
Upon poking around in some Python resources, I've learned (as I had suspected) that Python is quite helpful to libraries. This is primarily because it is relatively easy to learn and can be accomplish quick data automation tasks such as parsing, search/find and reporting.
Here are some neat resources for Python coding for librarians:
References
Association of College Research Libraries. (n.d.). Do Library stuff Faster with Python. ACRL TechConnect. Retrieved from http://acrl.ala.org/techconnect/post/do-library-stuff-faster-with-python/.
The ACRL TechConnect blog has articles written by librarians and archivists on technology-based projects, tools, codes, and design. This article is a quick look at some examples in libraries that could benefit from a Python solution. The article also has great references on learning Python.
Python for Librarians (2016). Retrieved from https://data-lessons.github.io/library-python/.
This webpage gives a quick getting started guide to coding in Python. There are a handful lessons with interesting sections for using Python to plot and visualize data and automate exercises.
Yelton, A. (2015). Coding for Librarians: Learning by Example. Library Technology Reports. Link: https://www.alastore.ala.org/content/coding-librarians-learning-example
This helpful book is a collection of interviews with 50 libraries. In it, the author not only covers coding but also the non-technical issues such as getting support from your library and collaborating with staff on projects.
Yelton, A. (n.d.) Coding for Librarians: Learning by Example. Retrieved from https://thatandromeda.github.io/ltr/.
This GitHub website was created by the author to offer various examples of various codes in HTML, Javascript, and Python. The code to each example is offered for FREE.
Yelton (2012). Why Should Librarians Learn Python? (A better answer). Retrieved from https://andromedayelton.com/2012/08/28/why-should-librarians-learn-python-a-better-answer/
This article explains reasons why python is useful in library settings. The one reason that I think is most interesting to many is that it can optimize workflows.
