Report on the CeOS_SE train-the-trainers workshop

On the 13th of July, the Train-the-trainer workshop – organized as an output of the CeOS_SE project and run by the University of Turin – took place online.

The workshop was designed to upskill the competencies of CeOS_SE partners, particularly of librarian staff involved in the project, on the topic of citizen science; a part of the workshop focused on the role of the libraries to support citizen science projects at the best.

Watch the recording of the event on your YouTube channel (or below).

View the speakers’ slides on our Zenodo channel.

The first speaker of the workshop was Andrea Sforzi, Director of the Museo di Storia Naturale della Maremma (Natural History Museum of Maremma). Andrea dealt with the concept of citizen science, which is still hard to understand for the general public, and with the multiple implementations in the natural sciences of citizen science. He presented the European Citizen Science Association (ECSA) and its working groups and the EU-citizen.science portal developed under the European Horizon 2020 funding program.

Alessia Smaniotto, Project manager of the European Project COESO, was the second speaker. Alessia dealt with citizen science projects in the Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH), citizen science practices and activities are very different between the hard sciences and soft sciences. She pointed out different applications of citizen science in SSH.

Maria Cassella, Director of the “Norberto Bobbio” Library, University of Turin, presented some citizen science projects involving academic and public libraries. Maria highlighted the role of both research and public libraries in supporting citizen science and citizen science projects. She also presented crowdsourcing projects focused on library collections and the new European Portal Europeana Transcribe.

Finally, she gave hints on how to implement a citizen science project in an academic library.

The participants gathered ideas on how to train for citizen science competencies and how to implement citizen science projects in their libraries. They also learned about active organizations in their respective countries, and several tools and guides to practice citizen science.

Next Autumn all CeOS_SE partners will organize locally in their native language a training course on Citizen Science for librarians. Keep an eye on the CeOS_SE website and social media channels – LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter – for more