Librarians In Training (LIT) Guide

Getting Started & On-boarding Guide for Open Librarians-In-Training (LIT)

What is this page & who is it for?

1. Learning about the Open Librarians-In-Training program
   
2. Applying to become an Open Librarian-In-Training
   
3. Welcome & Getting Started guide

Anyone with an Open Library account may make edits to pages on Open Library, but making advanced catalog edits like merging duplicate works, merging duplicate authors, or deleting records requires special permissions, tools, and training. Community members who wish to become Open Librarians should first request an invitation to be an Open Librarian-In-Training (or LIT for short). This page is for anyone in the community who wishes to apply for an invite to become an Open Librarian-In-Training and then learn about the super powers which come with this role.

Want to become an Open Librarian-In-Training?

You may request an invitation to become an Open Librarian-In-Training here: https://openlibrary.org/volunteer#librarian

After submission, we try to review requests within 1 week (typically on Mondays). Contributors will be invited to our community slack, to a channel called #open-librarians-g.

Welcome! Getting Started:

If your request to become an Open Librarian-In-Training has been granted, congratulations and welcome to a community of fellow book lovers!

First, please read our https://openlibrary.org/librarians & kindly review our Code of Conduct guide. Ever contributor is expected to follow these rules, which may be summarized as: let's please treat each other with kindness, dignity, respect, and consideration. We're all on the same team and excited to have you with us!

Communication Channels

The Open Library community has 2 channels on slack:

1. #openlibrary-g - for community discussion, product conversation
   
2. #open-librarians-g - for librarian general discussion & questions

Weekly Community Calls

Every Tuesday @ 10am PT you're warmly invited to join our community call. Reminders and links to the call will be posted in the #openlibrary-g and #open-librarians-g channels on slack each week.

Overview: How to Contribute

As an Open Librarian, there are 4 primary ways to contribute (which you can read more about here):

1. Collections: By contributing a Special Collection of books (such as this page for Lambda Literary Awards). If you're interested in helping on Collections, please read our Collection Guide and tag @tmanarl in a slack message!
   
2. Catalog: By fixing metadata issues with Authors and Books within the Catalog (identifying duplicates, missing covers, other data issues, or even adding missing books). At first, we're all LIT (Librarians-In-Training) which means, some metadata edits you'll be able to make right away, but before you get special account privileges, you'll need to coordinate merges/deletions with @Lisa (aka Sapphire), @dcapillae, or @tmanarl
   
3. Translations: If you're able to help translate (learn more) the Open Library website to other languages, we'd love to your help! Reply to @dcapillae
   
4. Documentation: We'd love help creating short screen recordings of Librarians workflows/tutorials for some of our common processes.

First, a quick tutorial on Open Librarianship

Understanding Identifiers

Any time you see a pattern like OL123A in this guide, you are looking at a unique identifier for either a book, author, or some other entity within our catalog. The first two letters "OL" helps us see that it's an identifier which is unique to Open Library. This is helpful when looking at many identifiers (such as ISBNs, etc) on a page. The final character in the identifier (in this case A) stands for Author. This final character may be A for author, W for work, M for edition, or L for a list, among other values. We call this final character the type abbreviation. The number following "OL" (in this case 123) and before the type "A" tells us this is the 123rd Author ever added to Open Library. This number allows us to uniquely differentiate one e.g. Author from another. Usually, when one visits an author's (or book or list) page on Open Library, such an identifier ID should appear within the website's URL.

HOWTO: Librarians In Training (LIT)

OK, so on Day 1, what can I do???

1. Organize a Collections List: Want to create a special collection? Start with a list (here's how)!
   
2. Make edits: Any patron with an account may edit and improve a book or author page on Open Library
   
3. Report duplicates: See duplicate authors or duplicate books which need to be merged? As a member of LIT, you may suggest works to be merged by utilizing the Merge Queue feature. To have these permissions added to your profile, please post in #open-librarians-g that you are interested in suggesting merges and tag @Lisa (aka Sapphire). After that, you will follow the steps outlined in the merging process to identify and submit duplicates to be merged. A Super-Librarian will review the proposal and complete the merge if approved.
   
4. Suggest deletions: See a record which should be deleted? In #open-librarians-g, submit a message with "delete", the ID, and a message/reason, like: delete: OL123W (spam)
   
5. Identify book series: Want to help identify Book Series? We have a feature planned for this this year (2022)! For now please use this tagging format to note a series!

Still have questions?

Questions are warmly welcome! If you have librarianship questions, always feel free to send us an email or (if you're on slack) tag @Lisa (aka Sapphire) who is our Lead Community Librarian + a member of staff! For questions about the Open Library program or roadmap, email mek@archive.org.

Welcome again, thank you for being here, and we can't wait to work together!