By Bryony Hawthorn and Nica Tsakmakis Digidexlibrarians+gitbook@gmail.com
Gosh, how time flies! On the 6th of August the Living Book of Digital Skills (You never knew you needed until now) turns one! And what a year it has been.
Like any first year of life, the Digital Skills GitBook has had its fair share of trips and falls but has learned a lot and grown along the way.
As proud parents, the GitBook family has shown off its many possibilities around Australia, including taking it to Canberra for ALIA National and Melbourne for VALA, to the Research Support Community Day, and to eResearch Australasia.
We’ve also been feeding our young GitBook a regular diet of Shut Up and Write sessions. These are helping our book grow like a tree. We have been writing content for the GitBook on heaps of suggested topics.
Just like any family, people come and go, and move around. We know it takes a community to raise a child and write a book. We now need our community to help shape our baby into a young adult.
We are looking for people keen to help us keep our baby growing! You can contribute by:
- Suggesting a topic for the book
- Helping us maintain the book
- Giving us feedback on the book
- Contributing a chapter that you write on a suggested topic or a topic of your choice
If you think you might be keen to write a chapter, you don’t necessarily need to write new content. It could be that you already have suitable content you’ve written for other projects. We will credit you as authors for your work.
Don’t be shy about contributing! We have a helpful short video for anyone who wants to know how to join our family and support us by adding useful content so others can grow from the fruits of our book. This video takes you step by step through using GitHub to contribute – what an awesome skill to add to your repertoire!
If after watching the video, you’re still a bit nervous of contributing via GitHub, that’s ok. Just email your content to us and we’ll do the rest.
Another option is to join the camaraderie of one of our Shut Up and Write sessions. Come to the next session on Tuesday 9th August and SUAW with a bunch of other folk, so the GitBook can continue to branch out. It is productive and fun. You can even write with a partner on a topic that interests you both.
If you can’t make this date, just email us for the next one. We have one a month for the rest of the year.
While we’ve given this book a personality, we do need your help to make the book a successful reality.
So please contact us via email Digidexlibrarians+gitbook@gmail.com if you have any questions or have content you can share.