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LACUNY Emerging Technologies Committee

The LACUNY Emerging Technologies Committee is dedicated to collaborative exploration of technologies that further the CUNY libraries’ missions. Through workshops, hack days, demoes, and other meetings, CUNY librarians learn new skills from each other and cultivate a community of openness, sharing, and encouragement.

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You, Your Library, and Git (discussion notes)

LACUNY Emerging Technologies Committee
Roundtable Discussion: You, Your Library, and Git
April 20, 2015 @ 10 AM
555 W 57th St (Rm. 1604)

Attendees: Allie Verbovetskaya (OLS, co-chair), Stephen Zweibel (HC, co-chair), Robin Davis (JJ, co-chair), Mark Eaton (KB), Dave Williams (QC), Nanette Johnson (QB), Junior Tidal (NY), Joan Kolarik (OLS), Julia Pollack (BX)

What is Git?

  • Software for creating incremental backups of code to allow you to go back to a different time, before a change broke the code, so you can start over again
  • Saves changes between files, not entire files == small file size
  • Collaborative: members of team can work together on same program, merge changes seamlessly (unless changes conflict directly, then Git offers options for saving specific changes)
  • Security: don’t store passwords in files culled by Git! Once they’re in there, they’re in there forever (…sorta) — store them in another file, then use .gitignore file to ignore that file
  • Git != GitHub (though usually used interchangeably)

Uses at CUNY Libraries

  • Code
  • Tracking issues
  • One-shot instruction (general master file, branches for individual classes/professors/topics)
  • Site code changes (Drupal) stored in Git, content saved directly in Drupal
  • Presentation collaboration (work individually toward a single goal)
  • OER (Open Educational Resource) platform
  • GitHub pages (personal sites/CVs, projects)

Other (Potential) Uses

  • Archiving (research history)
  • Poetry
  • Writing
  • Laws (local govs)

Followup

  • Create space in CUNY Academic Commons committee group to share GitHub usernames, projects, etc. to encourage collaboration
  • Create CUNY libraries organization in GitHub to store projects that can be forked by other libraries
  • Contact CUNY Web Services (owners of “CUNY” organization in GitHub) for information about policies, licenses, best practices — if nonexistent, work with them to create them

Tags: collaboration, git, github, version control