Just for fun, I did some at-scale reading of the job postings sent to the Code4Lib mailing list. More specifically, I wanted to know what adjectives were in the position descriptions and whether there have changes in the descriptions over time.

To this end, I first topic modeled the postion descriptions dating between 2015 and 2019, and three very broad themes presented themselves: 1) digital research services, 2) experience with systems and the Web, and 3) digital collections & metadata. From year to year, these themes seem to be equally proportioned; I don't think the desired qualities/responsibilities of "systems librarians" have changed very much in the past five years.

Next, I extracted all of the adjectives from all of the position descriptions and merely did a frequency count against the result. I did this for all five years of content (roughly 2,500 postings), and the differences between each year seemed negligible. Here is a list of the most frequent adjectives from the postings:

  digital, new, other, technical, professional, such, academic,
  strong, more, open, full, excellent, responsible, current,
  diverse, best, related, relevant, public, collaborative,
  scholarly, successful, electronic, innovative, online, national,
  equivalent, strategic, complex, wide, appropriate, demonstrated,
  repository, effective, creative, social, interpersonal,
  organizational, cultural, special, multiple, available, advanced,
  oral, institutional, various, high, subject

Similarly, here are the adverbs:

  well, as, also, not, effectively, closely, e.g., collaboratively,
  independently, highly, actively, online, up, at, least,
  currently, most, out, approximately, directly, especially,
  strongly, preferably, particularly, only, more, here, forward,
  on, immediately, rapidly, together, successfully, primarily,
  fully, quickly, creatively, regularly, newly, additionally,
  locally, just, in, internationally, prior, fast, clearly,
  culturally, progressively

Finally, what are the desired candidates expected to actually do (the verbs):

  work, include, provide, develop, support, bring, have, require,
  manage, use, demonstrate, apply, visit, maintain, relate, post,
  seek, serve, base, create, ensure, write, implement, lead,
  report, need, perform, participate, make, offer, build, learn,
  collaborate, meet, emerge, help, contribute, accredit, identify,
  assist, coordinate, prefer, encourage, improve, exist, integrate,
  submit, do

I suppose that if your annual review includes words from the three sets above, then you are dong a good job.

If you want to dig deeper, then see the individual "study carrels" where all this data can be gleaned -> http://carrels.distantreader.org

-- 
Eric Lease Morgan
Digital Initiatives Librarian, Navari Family Center for Digital Scholarship
Hesburgh Libraries

University of Notre Dame
250E Hesburgh Library
Notre Dame, IN 46556
o: 574-631-8604
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w: cds.library.nd.edu