Month: May 2015

Applications Development Analyst at Georgetown University Library

Georgetown University Library is recruiting a Applications Development Analyst .

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

The Applications Programmer Analyst helps develop, program and manage library technologies needed to support the library's applications and infrastructure. Assists and works with the Sr. Applications Programmer in planning, designing, coding, and maintaining the library's technology applications. Integrates software components into the library's applications and ensures software interoperability among the library's different applications and is responsible for developing and coding scripts and other programs that would alleviate manual workflows for other library staff using the library applications.

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"Robert Darnton Closes the Book"

Corydon Ireland has published "Robert Darnton Closes the Book" in the Harvard Gazette.

Here's an excerpt:

Early this summer, Robert Choate Darnton, Harvard's Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor and University Librarian, will pack up his book-lined office on the second floor of Wadsworth House.

As of June 30, the celebrated historian, digital library pioneer, and champion of books will leave the University he first saw as an undergraduate in 1957. A scholar of Enlightenment France and of the history of the book, he returned to Harvard in 1965 to join the Society of Fellows, decamped to Princeton University in 1968 for 39 years, and came back to Harvard in 2007.

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Wayback Machine Senior Engineer at Internet Archive

The Internet Archive is recruiting a Wayback Machine Senior Engineer.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

We are looking for a smart, collaborative and resourceful engineer to help develop the next version of the Wayback Machine. The ideal candidate will possess a desire to work collaboratively with a small internal team and a large, vocal and active user community; demonstrating independence, creativity, initiative and technological savvy, in addition to being a great programmer/architect.

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"Dana Rooks: A Retrospective"

The University of Houston Libraries has released "Dana Rooks: A Retrospective."

Here's an excerpt:

After holding positions at the University of Oklahoma and the University of Missouri-St. Louis, she joined the University of Houston. At UH, she fulfilled the roles of business/economics reference librarian, coordinator of library instruction, library personnel coordinator, assistant director for administration, assistant director for public services and administration, and acting director. This year, Rooks will retire after 18 years as Dean of Libraries and Elizabeth D. Rockwell Chair.

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Manager, Digital Studio at New York University

New York University is recruiting a Manager, Digital Studio.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

In consultation with the Head of the Digital Studio and in collaboration with the Manager of ATS Instructional Media & Technology, the Manager, Digital Studio will manage and oversee the planning, development, operations, and technical services in support of the University-wide educational and research activities of the Digital Studio. Provide client service, technical knowledge, technical development, and communications expertise in support of state-of-the-art computer technology used by faculty, researchers, and staff for teaching and research. Advise and consult with faculty and researchers in the design, development, and implementation of information technology services for teaching and research. Develop and deliver training programs including conducting seminars, training sessions, and workshops. Help support scholarly computing, in particular digital humanities, in collaboration with Digital Scholarship Services and Data Services.

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"Technology in Higher Education: Defining the Strategic Leader"

The EDUCAUSE Review has released "Technology in Higher Education: Defining the Strategic Leader."

Here's an excerpt:

In 2014, EDUCAUSE, the association of IT leaders in higher education in the United States, and Jisc, the national organization supporting the use of digital technologies for higher education and research in the United Kingdom, came together to address a common concern —that insufficient attention is paid to understanding the skills required by technology leaders in higher education, both now and in the future. The two organizations convened a working group of 10 U.K. and U.S. IT leaders to address this issue, and this article outlines their findings. It provides the higher education IT community with a model to guide IT professionals at all stages of their careers and to position technology as a central part of advancing the core mission of the academic institution. . . .

In approaching this topic, the working group asked themselves, "How do we put together something that is meaningful and practical for a relatively diverse audience?" Although the group came to consensus about the traits needed for a successful IT leader, they agreed that the challenge lay in sharing those traits in a way that explains how they work together, how they are used, and, more importantly, how to help people interested in moving into IT leadership. The following model describes the many roles an IT leader plays and provides guidance about how to use the model—for individuals, institutions, and teams.

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Digital Humanities Librarian at University of Miami

The University of Miami is recruiting a Digital Humanities Librarian.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

Reporting to the Associate Dean for Digital Strategies and working within a growing digital strategies team, the Digital Humanities Librarian will develop a set of services to support the evolving digital humanities research and pedagogy on the University of Miami campus. The Digital Humanities Librarian will work with colleagues in the UM Libraries, the Center for the Humanities, the Center for Computational Sciences (CCS), and the nascent digital humanities research program, among others, to identify and foster adoption of digital tools and resources that serve to advance scholarly work and teaching in the humanities and arts. The successful candidate will collaborate with faculty and students on digital humanities research and projects, and will serve as a resource for subject librarians and special collections curators involved with such projects. The successful candidate will serve as a liaison for the Center for the Humanities, and will have a firm grounding in research methodologies in humanities disciplines.

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NEH Grants: Humanities Collections and Reference Resources

The National Endowment for the Humanities has released guidelines for Humanities Collections and Reference Resources grants.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The Humanities Collections and Reference Resources (HCRR) program supports projects that provide an essential underpinning for scholarship, education, and public programming in the humanities. Thousands of libraries, archives, museums, and historical organizations across the country maintain important collections of books and manuscripts, photographs, sound recordings and moving images, archaeological and ethnographic artifacts, art and material culture, and digital objects. Funding from this program strengthens efforts to extend the life of such materials and make their intellectual content widely accessible, often through the use of digital technology. Awards are also made to create various reference resources that facilitate use of cultural materials, from works that provide basic information quickly to tools that synthesize and codify knowledge of a subject for in-depth investigation.

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Systems Administrator at University of Texas at Arlington

The University of Texas at Arlington is recruiting a Systems Administrator.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

1. Provide proactive systems management including system capacity planning, monitoring for security alerts and other critical updates and patches, and new software to enhance system functionality. 2. Perform tests, debugs, and maintain applications in client-server and Web-based environment. 3. Perform daily system checks, including the review of hardware and software error logs, system performance statistics, and other system status and activity reports. 4. Perform routine system administration, maintain system security, file system management, problem resolution, and address systems performance issues and crashes. 5. Ensure the integrity of server-based applications through application of appropriate security measures. 6. Install and upgrade server-based applications as needed. 7. Configure, manage, and debug MySQL database servers; configure, manage, and debug Apache web services.

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"The Open Access Interviews: John Willinsky"

Richard Poynder has published "The Open Access Interviews: John Willinsky" in Open and Shut?.

Here's an excerpt:

I was fortunate enough to draw together a wonderful team, led by the Associate University Librarian Brian Owen and technical wonder Alec Smecher at Simon Fraser University Library, who, through the research and development funds we were able to raise, created open source systems for scholarly workflow management and publishing. Together, we created Open Journal Systems (OJS) beginning in 2002, to answer the question of what will it cost to put a journal online. . . .

Over the course of the next decade, the use of OJS has spread across the globe to the point where—with 8,000 journals actively using it in 2013—we now feel a considerable responsibility at PKP for ensuring that this system provides a high-quality editorial workflow and publishing environment, and all the more so with roughly half of those journals in the Global South.

So in terms of your question on what PKP has developed into, I would say that it has become primarily but not entirely an open source software development and community support project in a global scale.

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Scholarly Communications Librarian at Texas Tech University

Texas Tech University is recruiting a Scholarly Communications Librarian.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

The successful candidate will work with faculty, staff, and students to convey an understanding of the changing modes of scholarly communication, open access and copyright issues, and scholarly publishing. This tenure-track position reports directly to the Associate Dean of Libraries for Outreach and Information Services.

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"Scholarly Social Media Profiles and Libraries: A Review"

Judit Ward et al. have published "Scholarly Social Media Profiles and Libraries: A Review" in LIBER Quarterly.

Here's an excerpt:

This article aims to point out emerging roles and responsibilities for academic librarians with the potential of better integrating the library in the research process. In order to find out how to enhance the online reputation and discoverability of individual faculty members as well as their affiliated institutions, the authors worked side-by-side with researchers in the United States and Europe to explore, create, revise, and disambiguate scholarly profiles in various software applications. In an attempt to understand and organize scholarly social media, including new, alternative metrics, the authors reviewed and classified the major academic profile platforms, highlighting the overlapping elements, benefits, and drawbacks inherent in each. The consensus is that it would be time-consuming to keep one's profile current and accurate on all of these platforms, given the plethora of underlying problems, also discussed in detail in the article. However, it came as a startling discovery that reluctance to engage with scholarly social media may cause a misrepresentation of a researcher's academic achievements and may come with unforeseen consequences. The authors claim that current skills and competencies can secure an essential role for academic librarians in the research workflow by means of monitoring and navigating researcher profiles in scholarly social media in order to best represent the scholarship of their host institutions.

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Assistant Manager, Digitization Services at New York Public Library

New York Public Library is recruiting an Assistant Manager, Digitization Services.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

The Digital Imaging Unit of NYPL Labs is seeking a knowledgeable and experienced Assistant Manager to help The New York Public Library to share its vast collections with the world through digitization. The Assistant Manager will help oversee the preservation-grade photography and reformatting of The New York Public Library's rare and unique holdings. The Assistant Manager will also work with the Digitization Services Manager and Head Photographer to initiate a range of new digitization streams with the goal of dramatically increasing the volume, speed, and range of NYPL's imaging activities with new equipment and experiments with new approaches. A key member of the DIU leadership team, this is a perfect opportunity for an enthusiastic, problem-solving individual interested in the full digitization lifecycle, from metadata and conservation to registrarial movements and preservation-quality imaging.

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Written Testimony of Maria A. Pallante, US Register of Copyrights and Director of the U.S. Copyright Office

The House Judiciary Committee has released the 4/29/15 written testimony of Maria A. Pallante, United States Register of Copyrights and Director of the U.S. Copyright Office.

Here's an excerpt:

Related to the problem of orphan works, the Office is completing its analysis of copyright issues inherent to mass digitization projects. In our study, witnesses have described some of the difficulties presented by mass digitization projects under current copyright law, and proposed specific statutory solutions.

As hearing testimony indicated, the problem with respect to mass digitization is not so much a lack of information as a lack of efficiency in the licensing marketplace. For a digitization project involving hundreds, thousands, or millions of copyrighted works, the costs of securing ex ante permissions from every rightsholder individually often will exceed the value of the use to the user. Thus, even where a library or other repository agrees that a use requires permission and would be willing to pay for a license (e.g., to offer online access to a particular collection of copyrighted works), the burdens of rights clearance may effectively prevent it from doing so. To the extent that providing such access could serve valuable informational or educational purposes, this outcome is difficult to reconcile with the public interest.

While fair use may provide some support for limited mass digitization projects—up to a point—the complexity of the issue and the variety of factual circumstances that may arise compel a legislative solution. In the Office's view, the legitimate goals of mass digitization cannot be accomplished or reconciled under existing law other than in extremely narrow circumstances. For example, access to copyrighted works, something many view as a fundamental benefit of such projects, will likely be extremely circumscribed or wholly unavailable. For this reason, as part of its orphan works and mass digitization report, the Office will recommend a voluntary "pilot program" in the form of extended collective licensing ("ECL") that would enable full-text access to certain works for research and education purposes under a specific framework set forth by the Copyright Office, with further conditions to be developed through additional stakeholder dialogue and discussion. Such input is critical, we believe, because ECL is a market-based system intended to facilitate licensing negotiations between prospective users and collective management organizations representing copyright owners. Thus, the success of such a system depends on the voluntary participation of stakeholders.

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Head, Digital Initiatives at University of Waterloo

The University of Waterloo is recruiting a Head, Digital Initiatives.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

Within the context of a rapidly evolving print and digital environment, the incumbent leads the creation and articulation of an evolving digital initiatives services and systems portfolio in alignment with the Library mission and Library strategic directions with ongoing input from throughout the Library and key stakeholders across campus. The Head, Digital Initiatives reports to the Associate University Librarian, Research & Digital Discovery Services.

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University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Faculty Council Unanimously Adopts Open Access Policy

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Faculty Council has unanimously adopted an open access policy.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Resolution 2015-9: On Endorsing a University Open Access Policy represented more than a year of work by a 35-member faculty Open Access Task Force. Chairs Todd Vision and Julie Kimbrough told the University Gazette that they worked diligently to craft a policy recommendation that could be applied differently according to the needs of various disciplines.

UNC-CH is the 51st university or university unit to have adopted an open access policies by a unanimous faculty vote.

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Digital Curation News (4/7/2015) #digitalcuration #digitalpreservation #researchdatamanagement

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Systems Archivist at University of Texas at Austin

The University of Texas at Austin is recruiting a Systems Archivist.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

Shares knowledge and experience in software development to advance the efficiency and functionality of Briscoe Center digital information services. Familiarity with the Open Archive Information System standard and its trending implementations (Fedora/Islandora, Fedora/Hydra). Provides recommendations and support for migration from legacy data systems to DAMS and Archival collection Management System (ArchivesSpace, ICA-AtoM). Recommends methods for and assists in the implementation of linked open data/semantic web principles and methods of implementation (RDF). Applies strong analytical and troubleshooting skills to complex applications. Applies knowledge of scripting languages and unix development environment to create custom programmatic solutions to messy data problems. Applies experience using software version control system to contribute to institutional documentation and versioning practices.

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"When Is an Article Actually Published? An Analysis of Online Availability, Publication, and Indexation Dates"

Stefanie Haustein et al. have self-archived "When Is an Article Actually Published? An Analysis of Online Availability, Publication, and Indexation Dates."

Here's an excerpt:

With the acceleration of scholarly communication in the digital era, the publication year is no longer a sufficient level of time aggregation for bibliometric and social media indicators. Papers are increasingly cited before they have been officially published in a journal issue and mentioned on Twitter within days of online availability. In order to find a suitable proxy for the day of online publication allowing for the computation of more accurate benchmarks and fine-grained citation and social media event windows, various dates are compared for a set of 58,896 papers published by Nature Publishing Group, PLOS, Springer and Wiley-Blackwell in 2012. Dates include the online date provided by the publishers, the month of the journal issue, the Web of Science indexing date, the date of the first tweet mentioning the paper as well as the Altmetric.com publication and first-seen dates. Comparing these dates, the analysis reveals that large differences exist between publishers, leading to the conclusion that more transparency and standardization is needed in the reporting of publication dates. The date on which the fixed journal article (Version of Record) is first made available on the publisher's website is proposed as a consistent definition of the online date.

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Web Site Designer/Developer, Senior at University of Arizona

The University of Arizona is recruiting a Web Site Designer/Developer, Senior.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

As a part of the library's web team, you will design useful, usable and accessible web products. The team will support you in this by providing an agile workflow (currently based on Kanban) and foundational tools (Redmine for issue tracking, Git and Subversion for version control), and you will have the opportunity to contribute to this framework. You will also be involved in user research, process development and improvement, and communication with stakeholders.

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ARL Signs The Hague Declaration on Knowledge Discovery in the Digital Age

ARL has signed The Hague Declaration on Knowledge Discovery in the Digital Age.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

More than 50 organizations around the world—including ARL—have signed the Hague Declaration on Knowledge Discovery in the Digital Age, which calls for immediate changes to intellectual property (IP) law and the removal of other barriers preventing widened and more equal access to data. . . .

The declaration asserts that copyright was never designed to regulate the sharing of facts, data, and ideas—nor should it. The right to receive and impart information and ideas is guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights but the modern application of IP law often limits this right, even when these most simple building blocks of knowledge are used.

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"Who Needs Open Access, Anyway?"

Walt Crawford has published "Who Needs Open Access, Anyway?" in Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large.

Here's an excerpt:

That title is not my own opinion or question—but it feels like the appropriate title for this odd roundup, covering several dozen items I've tagged over the last two years (or so) as " oa-anti. " The tag doesn't necessarily mean the item was a flat-out attack on open access (even with the typical "some of my best friends are OA, but… " nonsense that's usually now phrased as "I am/this publisher is/a big proponent of OA, however… "). It means that, in skimming the item initially, it seemed to register as something that either seemed to undermine OA or could be used as an attack on OA—or, in some cases, it's discussing somebody else attempting to undermine OA. At the end of this mostly-unsorted set of items, I note a handful of " oa-pro " items for a little balance.

You can help support Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large and Crawford's open access research by donating as little as $2 per month via PayPal.

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Digital Initiatives Librarian at Xavier University

Xavier University is recruiting a Digital Initiatives Librarian.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

The librarian in this key position is a primary planner and coordinator for library digital initiatives, including emergent technologies. Leads a team approach in furthering library efforts with Digital Humanities. Coordinates the library's instance of Digital Commons, our Institutional Repository. Manages a planned technology-intensive library Makerspace.

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"Thumbs Down for the Freemium Model? Researchers Reject Nature’s Fast Track Peer Review Experiment"

David Crotty has published "Thumbs Down for the Freemium Model? Researchers Reject Nature's Fast Track Peer Review Experiment" in The Scholarly Kitchen.

Here's an excerpt:

NPG launched a four-week trial in their megajournal Scientific Reports. The journal features a Gold open access (OA) business model, where accepted authors pay a $1,495 article processing charge (APC). In the trial, authors willing to pay an additional $750 upfront would get their decision in three weeks. NPG would be able to offer this additional speed by outsourcing the peer review process to Rubriq, a service offered by the private company Research Square.

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Digital Managing Editor at Folger Shakespeare Library

The Folger Shakespeare Library is recruiting a Digital Managing Editor.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

The Digital Managing Editor (DME), a new position, will be responsible for the day-to-day management of the Folger's online presence. The DME will work closely with content owners and contributors to develop deep, evergreen content; supervise enhancements to the visual presentation, architecture, and user experience of Folger-owned online properties; and work with our digital team to assess and recommend new technologies. The DME will also oversee and become the resident expert on the Folger's implementation of the Drupal content management system.

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