Thanks, everyone, for the great suggestions! 

Much appreciated.

Mike Monaco
Coordinator, Cataloging Services
261B Bierce Library
The University of Akron
Akron, Ohio 44325-1712
Office: 330-972-2446
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ORCID: 0000-0001-7244-5154


-----Original Message-----
From: Code for Libraries <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of Kyle Banerjee
Sent: Thursday, January 16, 2020 2:43 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] RegEx for public services/public-facing librarians

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