Intern, Unified Astronomy Thesaurus, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA
Posted June 18, 2018
UAT Metadata Crosswalk Internship
The Unified Astronomy Thesaurus (UAT) is an open, interoperable and community-supported thesaurus which unifies the existing divergent and isolated Astronomy & Astrophysics thesauri into a single high-quality, freely-available open thesaurus formalizing astronomical concepts and their inter-relationships. The UAT will improve search The UAT will be implemented by the American Astronomical Society as the required source of keywords applied to articles published in their journals. Currently, the UAT is being used by the Space Telescope Science Institute to classify proposals for using the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope.
We are looking for interns who can create crosswalks between the UAT and several other keyword/theusauri systems. The goal of this project is to provide a vocabulary crosswalk that can recommend the best matches between terms in the older vocabularies and concepts in the UAT. This will help ease the transition from these older systems (many of which are no longer being updated) to the modern Unified Astronomy Thesaurus.
Interns will have the opportunity to learn about thesaurus and metadata standards, such as SKOS, z39-19, and ISO 25964. They will learn about the process of developing and managing thesauri, as well as use cases for these metadata. Since the UAT is developed using SKOS standards, the crosswalk should use the SKOS Semantic Relations.
The Wolbach Library provides shared resources to support the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics community’s continuously evolving needs. Wolbach Library staff build, organize, manage, house, and preserve collections of physical and digital research artifacts; offer reference services and consultation; provide services in online literature searches and interlibrary loan requests; and contribute to and draw from remote databases, including the NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS). The Wolbach Library participates in local, national, and international networks and cooperative activities to promote scholarly advancement, the sharing of information, access to recorded knowledge, and the empowerment of the astronomy and astrophysics community.
Qualifications
Knowledge of information organization and/or astronomy/astrophysics.
Willingness to learn and fill their knowledge gaps in either of the above areas.
Ability to work independently and remotely.
Motivated, detail oriented, good communication skills.
Additional Information
This is an unpaid position, however we will work with you to meet internship requirements for your degree program.
This can be a completely remote internship position.
To Apply
Send your resume and brief cover letter to Katie Frey ([email protected]) no later than June 26, 2018.