August 2024 – DigitalKoans

Systems and Discovery Services Librarian at SUNY Cortland

The Systems and Discovery Services Librarian is a tenure-track, full-time academic faculty librarian reporting to the Director of Libraries. This position takes the lead in administering the library services platform, discovery system, information management systems, and digital asset management systems. The Systems and Discovery Services Librarian works in collaboration with other units of the library and Information Resources.

https://jobs.cortland.edu/postings/8991

"Toward Enhanced Reusability: A Comparative Analysis of Metadata for Machine Learning Objects and Their Characteristics in Generalist and Specialist Repositories"

Objective: The rapidly increasing prevalence and application of machine learning (ML) across disciplines creates a pressing need to establish guidance for data curation professionals. However, we must first understand the characteristics of ML-related objects shared in generalist and specialist repositories and the extent to which repository metadata fields enable findability and reuse of ML objects.

Methods: We used a combination of API queries and web scraping to retrieve metadata for ML objects in eight commonly used generalist and ML-specific data repositories. We assessed both metadata schema and characteristics of deposited ML objects, within the context of the widely adopted FAIR Principles. We also calculated summary statistics for properties of objects, including number of objects per year, dataset size, domains represented, and availability of related resources.

Results: Generalist repositories excelled at providing provenance metadata, specifically unique identifiers, unambiguous citations, clear licenses, and related resources, while specialist repositories emphasized ML-specific descriptive metadata, such as number of attributes and instances and task type. In terms of object content, we noted a wide range of file formats, as well as licenses, all of which impact reusability.

Conclusions: Generalist repositories will benefit from some of the practices adopted by specialists, and specialist repositories will benefit from adopting proven data curation practices of generalist repositories. A step forward for repositories will be to invest more into use of labels and persistent identifiers to improve workflow documentation, provenance, and related resource linking of ML objects, which will increase their findability, interoperability, and reusability.

https://doi.org/10.7191/jeslib.685

Senior Coordinator of Digital Archives and Digital Editing at Penn State (Term)

The Center for Black Digital Research at Penn State is seeking applications for the position of Senior Coordinator of Digital Archives and Digital Editing, at the rank of Researcher. This is a non-tenure-track, term appointment with a possibility for renewal.

The Senior Coordinator of Digital Archives and Digital Editing plays a central role in the digital curation and digital collection building of archival material in order to bring 19th-century Black organizing to digital life.

https://tinyurl.com/5dy6jwbc

"Cost, Advocacy, and a Mechanism for Transformation: The Proposed Power of Open Access Funds"

As paid open access becomes a mainstream academic practice, stakeholders must evaluate their role in the system. While open access advocates develop new ways to support the publication process and funding structure, commercial publishers continue to pivot to maintain their profit, relevance, and power in the publication system. This article provides the details of Montana State University’s Open Access Author Fund as an evaluation of the service and its impact on the local publishing ecosystem. As stewards of publicly funded knowledge, it is essential to critically analyze each new publishing route before adopting and supporting it. Especially when models claim to transform the system, librarians need to understand how an action changes the system, for whom, and at what cost.

https://tinyurl.com/524sp3tz

Data Services Librarian at University of Nebraska Medical Center

Coordinates and delivers the library’s research services for research data management, data curation, data visualization, data literacy, and open science. Oversees the continued development of a portfolio to support UNMC researchers. The position liaises with the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, UNMC units that support researchers, and researcher teams at UNMC. Provides instruction, literature search, liaison and outreach librarian services.

https://unmc.peopleadmin.com/postings/87949

"Back to Basics: Considering Categories of Data Services Consults"

Consultations are fundamental to data librarianship, serving as a vital means of one-on-one support for researchers. However, the topics and forms of support unique to data services consults are not always carefully considered. This commentary addresses five common services offered by data librarians—dataset reference, data management support, data analysis and software support, data curation, and data management (and sharing) plan writing—and considers strategies for successful patron support within the boundaries of a consultation.

https://doi.org/10.7191/jeslib.931

IT Administrator at Kansas State University

Kansas State University Libraries is seeking a highly self-motivated, process-oriented, and detail-focused individual to join its Information Technology team as a Systems Administrator. In this crucial role, you will be responsible for the effective and efficient operation of the Kansas State University Library’s IT servers and systems, providing comprehensive support for the IT infrastructure.

https://tinyurl.com/43kt35u2

Paywall: "Constructing Risk in Trustworthy Digital Repositories"

This article investigates the construction of risk within trustworthy digital repository audits. It contends that risk is a social construct, and social factors influence how stakeholders in digital preservation processes comprehend and react to risk.

https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-08-2023-0157

Head of Collections Discovery & Systems at University of Glasgow

The Head of Collections Discovery & Systems will articulate an ambitious vision for collection discovery, preservation, and access. The postholder will build capacity and capability within Library Collections to harness the potential of digital transformation and digital humanities scholarship to enhance and develop our professional practice and services. They will work closely with senior colleagues within Library Services and Library Collections to deliver an enabling technology environment meeting the needs of our collections and the expectations of our users.

https://tinyurl.com/vru7sprf

"Promoting Data Sharing: The Moral Obligations of Public Funding Agencies"

Sharing research data has great potential to benefit science and society. However, data sharing is still not common practice. Since public research funding agencies have a particular impact on research and researchers, the question arises: Are public funding agencies morally obligated to promote data sharing? We argue from a research ethics perspective that public funding agencies have several pro tanto obligations requiring them to promote data sharing. However, there are also pro tanto obligations that speak against promoting data sharing in general as well as with regard to particular instruments of such promotion. We examine and weigh these obligations and conclude that all things considered funders ought to promote the sharing of data. Even the instrument of mandatory data sharing policies can be justified under certain conditions.

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-024-00491-3

Head of Digital Scholarship at University of Pennsylvania

Reporting to the Director of Research Data and Digital Scholarship (RDDS), the Head of Digital Scholarship is responsible for the administrative management of libraries’ digital scholarship initiatives including those related to digital projects, digital humanities, public digital scholarship, and affiliated areas.

https://tinyurl.com/2zd5w8bx

"Sustaining a Spatial Collaboration: Leveraging Social Infrastructure to Support Technological Advancement in Geospatial Data Discovery"

The Big Ten Academic Alliance (BTAA) Geospatial Information Network (GIN) serves as a prime example of an enduring, successful collaboration across multiple institutions. The proliferation and significance of geospatial data have outpaced the development of adequate search tools and high-quality metadata, prompting the necessity for streamlined geospatial data discovery. In response, the BTAA-GIN established, maintains, and continuously enhances a geoportal that federates metadata from public geospatial data providers in addition to geospatial resources from member institutions. This article provides a reflective analysis of the evolution of the BTAA-GIN over the past nine years, an exploration of the ever-shifting open-source technology landscape, possible future directions and potential expansions of scope, and highlights key features contributing to its success. Examining the trajectory of the BTAA-GIN and the factors behind its achievements yields valuable insights for comparable large-scale, multi-institutional endeavors.

https://doi.org/10.1080/15420353.2024.2388576

Full Stack Applications Developer at Cornell University

Develop code for library service applications and enhance complex Library applications and integrations. Test, maintain, debug/troubleshoot.

Develop interfaces that integrate the functionality of library services in a web-driven user experience.

https://tinyurl.com/urhvwyk7

Library Systems Administrator at National Gallery of Art

Administer, evaluate, and maintain integrity and functionality of all modules (acquisition, cataloging, circulation, interlibrary loan, discovery, user management, and reporting analysis and visualization) of a cloud-based library service platform (such as Ex Libris Alma/PrimoVE).

Maintain service operation, apply new releases, fixes, and enhancements, and provides information updates to library departments as appropriate.

Serve as technical liaison to service and system vendors and the National Gallery’s Digital Services (TDS) department. Coordinate the library service platform integrations with National Gallery institutional IT infrastructure and external environment (the enterprise digital asset management system, or EDAMS), ADFS/SAML, staff directory, email, AWS cloud services, network, firewall, and security); perform in-depth configuration and troubleshooting and to ensure library service platform’s functionality, security, compatibility, upgrades, and enhancements.

Lead library’s technology projects and coordinate these with other internal projects and institution-wide IT projects. Conduct user needs research and develops criteria for expansion of existing services to meet new demands. Provide and develop configuration, workflows, improvements, and new features to meet library staff work requirements and to improve patron experience.

https://www.usajobs.gov/job/800302100

"A Publishing Platform That Places Code Front and Centre"

Last month, the Microscopy Society of America (MSA) quietly launched a journal that its creators hope will lead academic publishing in the future. Elemental Microscopy, a publication focused on reviews and methods tutorials, leverages an authoring and publishing platform called Curvenote to create rich, interactive, digital papers with coding and data analysis at their heart. By allowing readers to explore data and recreate results in the publication, the firm behind the platform, also called Curvenote, and its growing list of clients seek to ease science’s long-standing reproducibility crisis and modernize the scientific literature.

https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-02577-1

User Experience (UX) Professional at Colorado State University

The User Experience (UX) Professional will be instrumental in ensuring a seamless and empowering online user experience for staff and users by eliminating barriers to managing, discovering, and using library resources and services. The person in this position will be responsible for creating a deep understanding of Libraries’ online user behavior with UX assessment methods and analysis. They will actively work with the Library Technology Services team and library staff to apply their findings and implement solutions across a wide variety of online applications and discovery methods. CSU Libraries supports flexible work options for this role including in-person, hybrid or fully remote with expected on-site visits up to 3 times a year.

https://tinyurl.com/ce5jhykk

Paywall: "Data Quality Assurance Practices in Research Data Repositories — A Systematic Literature Review"

This study conducted a systematic analysis of data quality assurance (DQA) practices in RDRs, guided by activity theory and data quality literature, resulting in conceptualizing a data quality assurance model (DQAM) for RDRs. DQAM outlines a DQA process comprising evaluation, intervention, and communication activities and categorizes 17 quality dimensions into intrinsic and product-level data quality. It also details specific improvement actions for data products and identifies the essential roles, skills, standards, and tools for DQA in RDRs. By comparing DQAM with existing DQA models, the study highlights its potential to improve these models by adding a specific DQA activity structure.

https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24948

Digital Asset Manager at Rock & Roll Hall of Fame

The Digital Asset Manager will join the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s Digital Technology Division to provide leadership and expertise in the governance, maintenance, and support of stewarding digital assets. The Digital Asset Manager works closely with our Library & Archives and collaborates with departments across the Rock Hall to ensure a high-level approach to acquiring, processing, preserving, discovering, and delivering digital content and collections metadata.

https://tinyurl.com/yr8hz8ys

Research Organization Registry: "Using ROR for Funder Identification"

Several widely used scholarly systems are using ROR IDs to identify and disambiguate funding organizations. In this post, we’ll give you a glimpse of how and why these systems use ROR IDs as funder identifiers. . . .

DataCite, the DOI registration agency that most data repositories use, has supported ROR identifiers in the fundingReferences element of its metadata schema since August of 2019. This early schema change encouraged data repositories to send ROR IDs to DataCite in DOI metadata. Note, too, that DataCite is now encouraging funders to register DOIs for awards, and ROR is DataCite’s recommended funder identifier in award metadata.

DataCite’s API shows that nearly one-third of DataCite DOIs with an identifier in the funding reference use ROR as the funder identifier. Out of a total of about 1.4 million DataCite DOIs with funding identifiers, over 432,000 of them include ROR IDs. . . .

Another factor that has driven early adoption of ROR for funder identification in repository systems is the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) Generalist Repository Ecosystem Initiative (GREI), whose primary aim is to develop “a common set of cohesive and consistent capabilities, services, metrics, and social infrastructure across generalist repositories” so that NIH-funded researchers can more easily discover and share their research data. Seven generalist repository systems are participating: Dataverse, Dryad, Figshare, Mendeley Data, the Open Science Framework (OSF), and Vivli. All seven have agreed to implement ROR for author affiliations, and some have also taken the opportunity to implement ROR for funder identification sooner rather than later. . . .

See the full list of ROR Integrations to see more systems that are using or planning to use ROR for all kinds of purposes beyond funder identification — author affiliations, Open Access deal management, publisher identification, internal statistics, and more.

https://tinyurl.com/yva66cy4

Electronic Resources Management Librarian at Cal Poly Pomona

As a faculty member of the Collections, Acquisitions, and Resource Discovery Services (CARDS) Unit, the Electronic Resources Management (ERM) Librarian provides leadership in overseeing the lifecycle of the University Library’s extensive electronic collections and assists in administering the daily operations of the University Library, primarily within the ERM Unit.

https://tinyurl.com/2dnu669c

Germany: "Achievements of the First DEAL Agreement Phase"

In a new publication, the German-wide DEAL consortium presents the key achievements of its first contract phase with the publishers Wiley and Springer Nature. The newly published infographic brochure provides a comprehensive insight into the background, objectives and results of the DEAL initiative. . . .

A particular focus is on the enormous increase in Open Access publications. Between 2019 and 2023, more than 105,000 publications from German scientific institutions were published under the DEAL agreements, 97 percent of which are Open Access. This remarkable success means that two-thirds of all research output from Germany is now freely accessible worldwide — a significant increase from the 30% before the DEAL initiative began.

https://tinyurl.com/mu99w2kz

“The First DEAL Agreements 2019-2023: Setting the Path for Open Access and Transparency“

Reformatting Projects Librarian at University of Houston

Reporting to the Head of Preservation and Reformatting, the person in this position will support the development and implementation of the Libraries’ digital access and preservation services. The successful candidate will provide project management across departments for the overall digital projects pipeline, including creating project plans, scheduling and facilitating project meetings, and setting milestones and deadlines. The position will supervise a team of student workers, providing training on digitization activities and delegating project tasks to PARD staff and student workers. The position also will lead the maintenance and troubleshooting of digital reformatting equipment and software. At a broader level, the successful candidate is expected to evaluate the department’s reformatting workflows and develop strategies and automation to maximize digitization efficiency for all material formats. The position will be responsible for implementing UH Libraries’ digital preservation policies, and will ensure best practice approaches to sustainably store and manage files created through all PARD digitization services, including on-demand digitization.

https://tinyurl.com/yz7y6t7a

Oxford University Press: "Commit to Open: A New Initiative to Support Open Access for Books"

We are pleased to announce a new initiative to support open access for books, Oxford Scholarship Online: Commit to Open. . . .

Commit to Open aims to secure funding from libraries and institutions for 30 monographs to be published open access, ensuring that their digital editions are freely available, globally and in perpetuity.

There are three collections of 10 books available for libraries to support:

Support new voices: The landscape of academic publishing can often present particular challenges for those just starting their career. To nurture this community, we have a collection available where every book is written by an early career researcher. The titles in this collection are diverse, feature several titles on topics relating to under-represented groups, and cover eight different academic disciplines.

Humanities: This showcases the vitality and variety of our publishing across the Humanities. These books cover topics including the cross-pollination of ideas via missionaries, the cultural influences on music and music genres, and the flow of religious ideas and identities around the Mediterranean in both the ancient and modern worlds.

Law & Social Sciences: This collection has a strong focus on marginalized groups, with books on current controversies in development studies, incarceration systems, and voters from ethnic minorities and the LGBT community. It also features titles on radical ideas such as what we owe to animals and how states can exist without armed forces. If we reach our funding targets by March 2025, we will publish all 30 titles open access. If we receive a proportion of our target, we will make the corresponding proportion of the titles open access, with the remaining titles made available for purchase.

Pricing:

The price for a single collection is £2,500 / $3,500. If you commit financially to all three collections, you will receive a 10% discount.

The goal for our two subject-based collections is to reach a total of £122,500 (the equivalent to 10x our standard book processing charge). For our collection of books supporting authors who are Early Career Researchers we have a smaller goal of £73,500 (the equivalent to 6x our standard book processing charge).

Books that publish open access within this pilot will be excluded from any of our Oxford Scholarship Online purchasable collections and subscriptions — meaning you won’t be paying twice.

https://tinyurl.com/3jbvem2y

Digital Archives Relocation (DAR) Project Support Officer at Parliamentary Archives (Term)

The scope of DAR includes the migration of collections data and digital collections to The National Archives (TNA) systems, the transfer of web archiving collections and functions to TNA, the review and transfer of Parliamentary Archives’ web content, and the establishment of future processes to enable the continuing transfer of digital records from Parliament to TNA.

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"The State of Open Infrastructure Funding: A Recap of IOI’s Community Conversation "

In July, IOI hosted its second State of Open Infrastructure Community Conversation — this time, exploring the state of open infrastructure grant funding.

To set the stage,, IOI’s senior researcher Gail Steinhart provided an overview of the methods that were used to gather over $415M USD in grant funding data for open infrastructures (OIs) and broke down some of the key findings from the analysis. To dive further into the topic of funding data, IOI Executive Director Kaitlin Thaney facilitated a panel conversation that featured Steinhart, collaborators Cameron Neylon and Karl Huang from the Curtin Open Knowledge Initiative (COKI), and John Mohr, CIO of Information Technology for theMacArthur Foundation and co-founder of the Philanthropy Data Commons. With their extensive experience in grant funding from diverse perspectives of the scholarly ecosystem, the panel shed light on the trends, impact, and limitations of grant funding for OIs. . . . .

Across the grants the team mapped for the 36 open infrastructures represented in this dataset, awards were categorized to reflect whether they provide direct support to an OI, indirect support (meaning the OI is referenced in the award title or abstract, but the funding does not directly support the OI though it may provide some indication of on OI’s broader impact), adoption support (funding that supports the implementation of an instance of an OI at a local or community scale), and grants we were unable to classify (unknown). While a significant amount (42%) of funding goes to direct support, the majority of the funding (52%) goes to indirect support.

https://tinyurl.com/ye2yfzsr

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