For Writers
If you're writing a novel, a paper or a poem, git is all about keeping versions of your text safe if you need to go back, or if you want to share the load with someone else. Think of it as 'tracking' in word, but on steroids. Here's a great introduction for writers using Atom and Git
For Coders
Ever gone too far down the rabbit hole, and realised that great idea just isn;t working, ut you've rewitten everything? Git lets you roll back. It merges other's contributions to the official release, or lets you 'fork' someone else's project to bend to your own devices.
For Academics
If you want to get recognition for your code underlying your paper, or give recognition to the people who built it for you, git provides a permalink you can reference in your paper - for reproducable and transparent knowledge creation
Git is a free and open source distributed version control system designed to handle everything from small to very large projects with speed and efficiency. You can use public free services, or a server on campus.
The official git tutorial at Github is very good:
https://guides.github.com/activities/hello-world/
The library can run the Software Carpentry Git lesson in person for groups, or you can run through this Open Source lesson for yourself
If you would like a instructor lead training, contact Anton Angelo
At the University of Canterbury
Engineering run a git server that is available to all staff and students at
https://eng-git.canterbury.ac.nz/
If your work is only going to be available on campus with other UC colleagues, this is a good service to use.
For everybody
There is a free public service run at github you can access at
It is good if you are collaborating with people outside UC, or want your work available to support your publishing.