On Thu, Jan 16, 2020 at 6:43 AM Mike Monaco <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Good morning,
> A colleague and I are planning a workshop on using regular expressions and
> expect an audience of primarily public services librarians. I was hoping
> other users here could suggest some applications of regex that would be
> useful for librarians who are *not* working in technical services or IT
> 9where the applications are much more obvious to me). For example, pointing
> out that some apps and programs, like Google Docs, can use regex for
> find/replace, web sites or databases that support regex in searches, and so
> on. Thanks in advance.
>

I like your idea of using familiar programs such as Docs, Sheets, and
Microsoft Word rather than introducing new tools which impose a mental
overhead that hinders understanding. People have given some good examples,
maybe add call number and name normalization. Talking to some attendees and
helping with real problems they're experiencing right now (maybe even ask
for live examples in class to solve in real time) strikes me a good idea.

Regexes look like gibberish to people who are just starting and connecting
them to real world experience will help them stick much better.

kyle