Digital Scholarship Outreach and Lab Coordinator, Gordon Library, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA

Posted August 18, 2021

Description:

Worcester Polytechnic Institute’s Gordon Library invites candidates to fill a key position supporting our LYRASIS Catalyst Grant-funded project, Digital Scholarship With Purpose. This project will help create a model for focusing library digital scholarship labs on building a community of practice, using digital scholarship tools to advance research and inquiry on topics relating to diversity, equity, and sustainability. This is a full-time (37.5 hours/week) benefited term position, through June 2022. We welcome both current MLS candidates and recent MLS graduates. Application review will begin August 30. For more about this project, see the website at: https://sites.google.com/view/dswp/home

Responsibilities:

Develop and Coordinate Programming: The Digital Scholarship Outreach and Lab Coordinator will coordinate, develop, schedule and facilitate a 6-7 month program of activities centered in the library’s Shuster Digital Scholarship Lab, which may include:

hosting faculty-led student projects
hosting and organizing Digital Volunteers activities (e.g. researching and editing sources like Wikipedia);
supporting students, staff, or faculty in developing digital exhibits related to diversity, equity and sustainability;
providing workshops on Open Science and other initiatives committed to inclusive and equitable knowledge;
hosting community digital archiving or digitization events;
carrying out data analysis, visualization, and simulation projects that support research on diversity, inclusion, sustainability;
analysis of text corpuses or other cultural and data records to build our knowledge of equity, diversity, and sustainability; and/or
open data projects that support research and action in diversity, inclusion, and sustainability.

Outreach and assessment: To carry out this program, the Digital Scholarship Outreach and Lab Coordinator will engage the university community and external partners and visitors to facilitate their participation in digital scholarship activities and seek their input, using techniques that may include:

Organizing virtual meet-ups
Coordinating and supporting an advisory group
Gathering feedback from lab users and visitors and potential users
Hosting internal or external visitors
Interviewing and/or hosting external experts and remote or in-person programs

Marketing, communications, documentation: The Digital Scholarship Outreach and Lab Coordinator will raise community awareness of digital scholarship activities and opportunities, and convey the project’s vision for the Digital Scholarship With Purpose, through regular communications, including management and maintenance of a website for the lab and its program. Activities may also include:

Developing and publishing announcements or stories for distribution through university or community channels
Building a package of documentation of the project
Creating a web-based portfolio illustrating the work completed or created as a result of the project

Technical support: This position will help design and offer workshop series that support lab users as they learn and practice digital scholarship methods. Together with a student assistant and other project partners they will provide technical support and consultations for common digital scholarship technologies and platforms.

Project and logistical support: This position will direct, train, schedule and mentor a student assistant (10 hours/week); and participate in and provide support to the library’s project working group.

University service: This position may also participate in and contribute to library and WPI committees, initiatives, and goals, including the library’s and the university’s goals regarding equity, inclusion, and sustainability.

Professional development: The position will be encouraged to engage in and contribute to the profession through continuing learning, service, research, presentations, or professional communications; costs of travel or conference and training may be provided.

Other: The position may perform other duties as assigned to meet department, library, and university goals and objectives. Most work will be on site, but some remote work may be possible; some travel within the Worcester/New England area may be possible, and/or attendance at LYRASIS annual meeting.

Required Knowledge, Experience, and Abilities:

ALA-accredited graduate degree or equivalent relevant graduate degree or graduate work in progress.
Experience in the use and application of at least one digital scholarship or digital humanities technology, platform, or method, including but not limited to: digital exhibits, multimodal publishing, textual analysis, network analysis, data management or visualization, geospatial mapping
Strong communication, outreach, organization, and marketing skills.
Web site design and development skills.
Ability to work in a diverse community in a manner that is respectful, empathetic, and responsive to different needs and cultures.
Strong service orientation and the ability to work in a fast-paced environment.
Ability to work independently and collaboratively.
Flexibility, creativity and a willingness to take risks and experiment with new methods.
Strong oral and written communication skills, interpersonal skills, and presentation skills.
Demonstrated ability to successfully plan, document, and complete projects.

Preferred Qualifications:

Experience organizing and leading trainings and workshops
Familiarity with or willingness and ability to quickly learn digital scholarship tools and platforms such as HTML/CSS, Python, Ruby, PHP, R, Javascript, Drupal, WordPress, Github, ArcGIS, Omeka, Tableau, Jupyter Notebooks
Familiarity with digital research skills such as text mining, natural language processing, topic modeling, social network analysis, data mining, mapping, and visualization, data cleaning/wrangling/normalization, using regular expressions, or web scraping.
Experience teaching or mentoring others in digital scholarship skills
Interest in the ethical procurement, structuring, documenting, sharing, and interpreting of data for research and scholarship
Working knowledge of intellectual property issues (including Creative Commons licensing)

Please note: this is a grant-funded position. Anticipated end date is June 30, 2022.

How to apply:

How to apply: Interested candidates should apply electronically through the WPI Careers site, by following the “APPLY” link at https://wpi.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/WPI_External_Career_Site/job/Worcester/Digital-Scholarship-Outreach-and-Lab-Coordinator_R0001482. A resume and cover letter are required.