On Mon, Oct 27, 2014 at 10:02:18AM -0400, Siobhain Rivera wrote:
> I'm part of the ASIS&T Student Chapter and Indiana University, and we're
> putting together a series of workshops on Unix. We've noticed that a lot of
> people don't seem to have a good idea of why they should learn Unix,
> particularly the reference/non technology types. We're going to do some
> more research to make a fact sheet about the uses of Unix, but I thought
> I'd pose the question to the list - what do you think are reasons
> librarians need to know Unix, even if they aren't in particularly tech
> heavy jobs?
> 
> I'd appreciate any input. Have a great week!

I wouldn't necessarily typecast reference librarians: some of them are
the most tech-savvy non-IT "types" whom I have met.

I assume by "Unix" one means the Unix/Linux command line, and the
tools one can invoke from there, which gives a commonality to the
environment regardless of the implementation details of the particular
OS (which is of more importance to system administrators, who need to
understand the dialects in greater detail).

The traditional strength of the environment is in manipulating
arbitrary textual data: sed, (g)awk, (e)grep and their congeners make
some otherwise difficult tasks manageable.

All of our archivists are command-line savvy: years ago we moved them
off a (home-grown) Microsoft Windows-based solution to creating
finding aids to a (home-grown) Unix-based one without a problem. (We
use FreeBSD for non-commercial products; for commercial products we
use RedHat Linux.) Whether they use Unix ordinarily is less relevant,
I think, than that they can when the need arises: the command-line
paradigm is not a barrier for them.

One cannot predict the trajectory one's future might take. If one day
one finds oneself talking to a faculty member working with big data
(from the sciences or from the humanities), one is likely to be
talking to someone with basic Unix/Linux command-line skills. Unless
one thinks that the future of librarianship has nothing to do with
such things, then I would recommend learning (not necessarily liking
let alone becoming fluent in) Unix/Linux skills, simply to extend
one's computer literacy, and to be able to represent the profession
capably should the occasion arise.

-- 
Charles Blair, Director, Digital Library Development Center, University of Chicago Library
1 773 702 8459 | [log in to unmask] | http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/~chas/