Hello Code4Lib members,

Please consider applying to and/or sharing the job opening below for the HathiTrust Research Center Digital Humanities Specialist.

All best,
Harriett Green




Harriett Green
English and Digital Humanities Librarian
Assistant Professor, University Library
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
[log in to unmask] | 217-333-4942
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1834-6264


Under the Illinois Freedom of Information Act, any written communication to or from university employees regarding university business is a public record and may be subject to public disclosure.






HathiTrust Research Center Digital Humanities Specialist
(Visiting Academic Professional)
University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign Library


Position available immediately. This is a full-time visiting academic professional appointment in the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library, funded for two years with the possibility of renewal or being made permanent.

Duties and Responsibilities:  The University of Illinois Library conducts a variety of activities in support of digital humanities scholarship, including creation, delivery, curation and preservation of a wide variety of types of digital assets and tools.  In particular, its partnership in the HathiTrust Research Center (HTRC) with Indiana University - Bloomington and the University of Illinois's Graduate School of Library and Information Science requires a robust support infrastructure for facilitating researchers' access and use of textual corpora from the HathiTrust Digital Library. The University of Illinois Library aims to become an exemplar of research support for textual analysis and data visualization in the HathiTrust community.

Reporting to the English and Digital Humanities Librarian, the Visiting HTRC Digital Humanities Specialist will assist with the development of training and outreach initiatives in support of libraries who wish to start their own HTRC research services as well as researchers working with the Hathi Trust Research Center.  Responsibilities will include planning, implementation and continuous design and development of training materials and educational workshops (both face-to-face and remote) and outreach activities in support of the usage of HTRC tools and datasets. The successful candidate will focus on supporting the development of HTRC research services at HathiTrust member institutions, and will collaborate with public services and data services librarians at HathiTrust member institutions on developing support services for digital humanities research with HTRC corpus. The successful candidate will have an excellent understanding of instructional design, and will be able to develop effective and engaging resources for librarians to use with researchers. The specialist will work closely with the English and Digital Humanities Librarian at the University of Illinois Library to develop research data services for the humanities, with particular emphasis on the HTRC corpus and tools.

The specialist will spend up to 20 percent of their time on the support of research work with the HTRC. Examples of currently supported digital humanities projects involving the HTRC corpus include a text mining project of eighteenth-century novels for changes in dialect; a text mining project to search HT volumes for n-grams related to technology ; a comparative literature textual analysis project; and topic modeling of twentieth-century texts for depictions of African-American women. In addition, the successful candidate will contribute to the work of the Scholarly Commons in helping to articulate the relationship between new technologies and humanities scholarship to the community of humanists; and in advising teaching faculty on the usage of digitized textual corpora and providing technical support for use of analytical tools.  The scope and responsibilities will evolve in accordance with priorities established by the Library and HathiTrust community.

As an Academic Professional employee, the Digital Humanities Research Specialist is encouraged to use "investigation time" to pursue areas of his or her interest, not directly in support of an immediate program need, in accordance with the University Library's policy on Investigation Time for Academic Professional Employees.  Some investigations that originate in this manner may evolve into regular work assignments or production activities http://www.library.illinois.edu/administration/human/resources/investigationtime.html.


Qualifications: Required:  Bachelor's degree in a humanities discipline or information science field, and two years of experience working in a related field; demonstrated experience in instructional design and in providing workshops or other instruction;; effective oral and written communication skills in a variety of modes; knowledge of or experience with one of more of the technologies used to support text mining, topic modeling, or, such as R and related analysis tools; the ability to work independently as well as collaboratively in a team environment; excellent organizational skills and a demonstrable ability to manage multiple priorities; familiarity with content management systems and website management; the ability to remain conversant with newly evolving technologies.
Preferred:  Master's degree in a humanities field, information science, or related discipline; experience with technologies for distance and remote learning; experience in planning and implementing programs or services; experience working with metadata encoded in one or more of the following schemas: MARC, MODS, METS, TEI; familiarity with linked open data and semantic web technologies; knowledge of or experience with digital preservation strategies; experience in writing grant proposals.

Campus & Community: The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is a comprehensive and major public land-grant university (Doctoral/Research University-Extensive) that is ranked among the best in the world. Chartered in 1867, it provides undergraduate and graduate education in more than 150 fields of study, conducts theoretical and applied research, and provides public service to the state and the nation. It employs 3,000 faculty members who serve 31,000 undergraduates and 12,000 graduate and professional students; approximately 25% of faculty receives campus-wide recognition each year for excellence in teaching. More information about the campus is available at www.illinois.edu<http://www.illinois.edu>. The University is located in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana, which have a combined population of 100,000 and are situated about 140 miles south of Chicago, 120 miles west of Indianapolis, and 170 northeast of St. Louis. The University and its surrounding communities offer a cultural and recreational environment ideally suited to the work of a major research institution. For more information about the community, visit:http://illinois.edu/about/community/community.html or http://www.ccchamber.org/.

Salary:   Salary is competitive and is commensurate with experience and credentials.

Apply: To ensure full consideration, please complete your candidate profile at https://jobs.illinois.edu and upload a letter of interest, resume, and contact information including email addresses for three professional references. Applications not submitted through this website will not be considered. For questions, please call: 217-333-8169.

DEADLINE: in order to ensure full consideration, applications must be received by December 5, 2014.

Illinois is an equal opportunity employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, religion, color, national origin, sex, age, status as a protected veteran, or status as a qualified individual with a  disability. Illinois welcomes individuals with diverse backgrounds, experiences, and ideas who embrace and value diversity and inclusivity.  (www.inclusiveillinois.illinois.edu<http://www.inclusiveillinois.illinois.edu>).