Scholarly Communications Intern, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA

Posted March 30, 2017

Availability: Accepting Applications
Start Date: June 1, 2017
Job Title: Scholarly Communications Intern 
Hours: 15 hours per week, including some weekend and evening hours. 
Salary: $15/hr.

Overview:
The Teaching, Research, and Learning (TRL) division of Penn Libraries provides research, instructional, and technology support to members of the Penn community and the general public. As part of the larger TRL team, the intern will work with members of the Digital Scholarship Department to support research, publishing, and scholarly communications initiatives.

Responsibilities:
The intern will have responsibilities in four main areas:

• ScholarlyCommons digital projects
• Faculty Assisted Submission (FAS)
• Publishing program research and coordination
• ScholarlyCommons promotion and outreach

The successful applicant will be trained in operations and services provided by ScholarlyCommons, Penn’s institutional repository. The intern will assist the ScholarlyCommons team in the management and execution of digital projects in support of Penn teaching, research, and other activities. The intern will assist in setting up series in ScholarlyCommons, determining appropriate metadata, populating the series, and managing relations with internal and external stakeholders.

The intern will also be trained in ScholarlyCommons’ Faculty Assisted Submission (FAS) service, which determines copyright and publisher requirements/restrictions for Penn faculty members’ previously published works. The intern may help manage the output of the FAS team by reviewing and providing quality control over FAS work. The intern will also assist in populating and managing Penn’s Publisher Policy Database, which keeps track of information about publisher policies, and provide feedback on the FAS workflow as a whole.

The incumbent will also assist in ongoing efforts to start a more comprehensive publishing program at Penn. This may include researching current scholarly communication practices for various parts of the publishing cycle, creating guides, and finding ways to support publishing at Penn. The intern may also help coordinate a scholarly communication research study.

The chosen applicant may also assist in efforts related to the promotion of and outreach for ScholarlyCommons. This may include identifying successful case studies, writing short blog posts, composing tweets or other blurbs for social media, or otherwise updating the larger community about ScholarlyCommons developments.

In addition to the responsibilities above, the intern will provide online and in-person reference assistance at the Van Pelt Dietrich-Library Center’s public services hub, andparticipate in a wider program to teach bibliographic instruction to first-year students at Penn.

Requirements:
This position is intended for current students in an ALA-accredited graduate program in library/information science. Strong academic background and public service orientation. Ability to learn quickly, work independently, and face new and unexpected questions on a regular basis. Our extensive training program leads us to ask for a one-year commitment.

Preferred Experience:
The Scholarly Communications team will provide the intern with training in all of the above responsibilities. The following are suggested areas of expertise or experience, but they are by no means required. The successful applicant must have a strong desire to learn more about scholarly communications work but does not necessarily need to have had any direct experience in these areas.

• Previous experience or classes related to copyright, author rights, publishing, open access, or other scholarly communications areas
• Basic HTML or other programming knowledge
• Project management
• Management experience

Other required skills/abilities:

• Strong attention to detail
• Good communication skills, both written and oral
• Time management
• Familiarity with library systems and academic institutional structure
• Strong research skills
• Familiarity with Microsoft Office programs (Word, Excel) and Google suite (Docs,Sheets)
• Ability to work independently and in groups
• Inquisitive; comfortable asking questions
• Capacity to learn quickly and flexibly adapt to changing priorities

To apply, please submit a resume and letter of interest to: 
Sarah Wipperman 
[email protected]
Use subject line “Scholarly Communications Internship.”

The University of Pennsylvania values diversity and is an affirmative action/equal opportunity employer.