Francesca Mackenzie works at The National Archives UK; Lotte Wijsman and Susanne van den Eijckel both work at the National Archives of the Netherlands.
Flabbergasted, excited and grateful: This was the rollercoaster of emotions that happened when Matthew Burgess announced that the study group Bits and Bots for developing digital skills won the DP Award in the category Teaching and Communications during iPRES2024. We cannot thank the judges enough for the huge acknowledgement they gave our work, the moment they announced we were on the shortlist. To actually win the award was just the cherry on top!
The winners in the category Teaching and Communications (Bits and Bots study group for building digital skills) share more about their initiative in this blogpost.
Who are ‘we’ exactly? And why did we start a study group? You might remember a blog on the OPF website from about a year ago. This was an open invitation to those who work in digital preservation, libraries or archives that felt the need to develop some digital skills, just as we - the organisers - did. The organisers of the Bits and Bots study group are Francesca Mackenzie (The National Archives UK), Lotte Wijsman, and Susanne van den Eijkel (both National Archives of the Netherlands) and we all have been working in the field of digital preservation for the past few years. We were looking for ways to improve our digital skills, and saw coding as a way to do that. The three of us, like others in this field, have a background in the humanities, but realise our jobs often require technical skills. Whether it is analysing files in a hex editor or installing tools via GitHub, certain digital know-how can help a lot!
We do not have to become programmers, nor did we want to, but having a basic level of understanding would aid our work. Moreover, it is nice to learn some new skills that can be used for a broad variety of activities. It can be very hard to learn in isolation and to have continued motivation to keep up. Therefore we decided that we needed an incentive for the study group, to keep it as fun and low-level as possible. That’s where the idea came from to learn by building games.
While enjoying some mango chutney during the summer of 2023, the ideas became more concrete. We created two learning paths focused on either Python or front-end programming languages. We designed an eight module curriculum that made use of online freely-available resources paired with exercises to help structure the workload across a year. At the end of each module participants would be able to create a game using what they had learnt. Alongside this we wanted to facilitate monthly meetings to ask questions, learn together and share the games that have been created. We called these expert sessions and organised a range of amazing speakers on topics as the command prompt, UX design and APIs. Within a year, members have learned the basics of programming and developed some broader digital skills.
In February 2024, we organised a kick-off meeting for the study group. We shared the program and the schedule for the coming year. In the end, 47 people signed up from 5 different continents. Even though it is time consuming and some members are still a bit behind, we can already see the benefits of joining Bits and Bots. The expert sessions are found useful because of the links with practice and some of the members shared how the learning materials have helped them to optimise pre-ingest work flows. Furthermore, by learning HTML, there is a better understanding of websites and therefore more insight on how to archive them.
In our GitHub repository, you can find all the learning materials that we have been using. But, more importantly (!), this is also the place where you can find the games that have been created by our members. We are so happy to have been able to start this journey with them. We have said it before, but without our members Bits and Bots would not exist. Are you curious to learn more about the study group? Or find out about the future of Bits and Bots? Join Susanne and Lotte during the winner webinar on December 3rd, where we will share more about the Bits and Bots study group for developing digital skills.