As Jane Austen once wrote, “It is a truth universally acknowledged that scripting and coding skills have the potential to create efficiencies and improvements in all kinds of digital archives and digital preservation workflows.” Or at least she might have if she were an archivist working with born-digital materials in the 21st century. Despite this recognised need, practitioners often describe this as a gap in their skillset and point to difficulties identifying effective methods and tools for developing these skills to the extent that they can be practically and meaningfully used. There are several barriers contributing to this, including the lack of formal curriculum and training opportunities that focus on archives and preservation GLAM applications, a lack of confidence and/or common feelings of imposter syndrome, and difficulties bridging the gap between skills learned in one-off workshops and those needed to implement practical solutions in everyday life.

Our hope is that this group will help us overcome some of these obstacles by creating a community of learning that will:

• Focus specifically on the cultivation and development of Python skills in order to support library and archives’ tasks and workflows;
• Empower practitioners to use Python in their everyday work;
• Support accountability for practitioners as they learn and implement Python together;
• Help participants identify resources that are applicable to real-life;
• Provide a non-judgmental space where anyone and everyone feels welcomed and valued, regardless of their level of expertise;
• Allow for shared learning and collaboration across time zones, geographies, and distinct institutional contexts.

_{February 10, 2020}