I'm happy to report that North Carolina State University has been awarded a CLIR Postdoctoral Fellowship for Data Curation in Medieval Studies. The full job description is pasted below and may also be viewed at http://www.clir.org/fellowships/postdoc/applicants/ncsu2013. More information on the program may be viewed at http://www.clir.org/fellowships/postdoc/applicants/dc-medieval. I will be working directly with the fellow and am happy to answer any questions.
Tim Stinson
--- Desired Skills & Expertise
Familiarity with or interest in learning HTML, XML, and WordPress. Strong organizational and communication skills to coordinate with project partners across campus and at other institutions. Ability to make effective use of social media for public outreach. Programming skills and/or familiarity with metadata standards desirable but not required.
Fellow's Role
The Fellow will serve as a liaison between academic departments, faculty researchers, and the Digital Libraries Initiatives (DLI) Department on NCSU’s campus. The fellow will have the opportunity to work on four NCSU-based projects involving data curation in medieval studies: the Medieval Electronic Scholarly Alliance (MESA); the Manuscript DNA project; the Siege of Jerusalem Electronic Archive (SJEA); and the Piers Plowman Electronic Archive (PPEA). The fellow will also serve as a liaison between NCSU and partners at other universities engaged in related research projects, including the Advanced Research Consortium (ARC), a meta-federation comprising MESA, the Renaissance English Knowledgebase (REKn), 18thConnect, the Networked Infrastructure for Nineteenth-Century Electronic Scholarship (NINES), and Modernist Networks (ModNets). The fellow will have the opportunity to conduct original research on data curation strategies and will be encouraged to participate actively in the larger community of CLIR postdoctoral fellows, including the cohort of fellows in the Data Curation in Medieval Studies Fellowship program. A strong emphasis will be placed not only on the ways that the Fellow can contribute to our institution, but to the professional development of the Fellow in the fields of medieval studies and library science.
Duties and Responsibilities
Study data curation strategies in use on other campuses and in other fields, including the sciences, and develop a set of recommendations for best practices for the curation of humanities data. This work will be done in consultation with the online DH Curation Guide and will form the basis of contributing new resources and information to that guide. Seek solutions for linking humanities data and datasets to related scholarship in new forms of interactive publications; the Fellow will be encouraged to consult and seek partnerships with relevant initiatives such as Anvil Academic and Open Humanities Press as well as with ARC partners, including JSTOR, ECCO (Eighteenth Century Collections Online) and Project MUSE Present original research at professional conferences as appropriate Collaborate with software developers on the creation, modification, and augmentation of tools related to digital projects in the field (e.g., development of the Collex browser for MESA, enhancements to the fuzzy search capabilities built into SJEA and MESA to accommodate non-standardized medieval spelling practices) Conduct user testing of software and web portals using the NCSU Libraries’ Usability Research Lab Use social media for public outreach related to NCSU Libraries, the Data Curation Fellowship program, and medieval studies projects on which the fellow is working Participate in the organization of workshops and symposia, including digital public humanities events and meetings of the Advanced Research Consortium held on NCSU’s campus
Local Guidance and Professional Development Support
As a member of the Digital Libraries Initiatives (DLI) Department the Fellow would be a member of a 14-person team that works in the areas of data curation, digital repositories, web and mobile applications, digital media, data visualization, and geospatial data. The Fellow would participate in departmental teams and meetings, and would have the opportunity to collaborate with staff that have a variety of technical and domain-specific skill sets. The Fellow would have access to technology support and consultation services from DLI staff members as well as from the Information Technology Department, which maintains the Libraries’ technical infrastructure.
The Fellow would work closely with Professor Timothy Stinson in the Department of English on the four interdisciplinary projects listed above, as well as with Professor James Knowles of English, the project manager for PPEA. Cumulatively, these projects include a wide variety of data related to medieval studies, including large genomic datasets from the Manuscript DNA project, XML-encoded transcriptions and descriptions of manuscripts, images of manuscripts from SJEA and PPEA, and tens of thousands of RDF metadata records from MESA.
The Fellow would be encouraged to be part of the intellectual life of the English department, including speakers series, symposia, and workshops, and would be offered the option of teaching one or more medieval studies courses in the department during his or her tenure. The Fellow will also be joining a vibrant community of medievalists spanning the closely linked campuses of NCSU, UNC Chapel Hill, and Duke University. Opportunities include participating in the Triangle Medieval Studies Seminar, the UNC Medieval & Early Modern Lecture Series, the Duke Medieval & Renaissance Lecture Series, colloquia at the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, and special events at the nearby National Humanities Center.
-- Timothy L. Stinson Assistant Professor Department of English North Carolina State University http://english.chass.ncsu.edu/faculty_staff/tlstinso