Linked Data Programmer Analyst

Description

The Linked Data Programmer / Analyst for Digital Library Systems & Services (DLSS) plays an integral role in defining, developing and delivering information systems and infrastructure for the library of the future at Stanford University. As part of DLSS within Stanford University Libraries (SUL), the holder of this position helps SUL's efforts to support scholarship in the digital age by delivering on the promises of the digital library.

The incumbent will be a part of the Digital Library Infrastructure group, a team focused on realizing core components of the Stanford University Libraries' emerging digital library architecture. The team focuses on delivering cross-cutting digital library services and infrastructure, such as metadata generation, transformation and management; service oriented library infrastructure; and digital asset & rights management. This group works closely with peer teams focused on other aspects of digital library functionality in the creation of common and reusable technologies and components.

This position will focus specifically on leveraging Linked Data in Stanford's digital library environment. The successful candidate will work as an integral member of interinstitutional project to transform, load, and cross-link traditional library data into Linked Open Data. S/he will also drive the development of Linked Data-powered services to augment current SUL interfaces (such as the catalog, digital repository, and community profile applications).

This is a two-year term position, with the possibility for renewal.

Duties and Responsibilities:

• Transform, and cross-link scholarly information resources from across Stanford into Linked Data, using the appropriate community models, vocabularies, ontologies and authorities. Engage in local, inter-institutional, and community discussions, projects and initiatives to define, vet and utilize emerging models and best practices in the scholarly use of Linked Open Data. (30%)
• Install, configure and operate a linked data infrastructure capable of loading, hosting, publishing and providing access to this Linked Open Data store at Stanford, using open source and/or commercial software. (30%)
• Augment Stanford Libraries web applications (such as the catalog, digital repository, publications database, public web pages) with Linked Data-based services for authority look ups, cross-reference searches, entity / idenfitifer suggestions, etc. Incorporate semantic enhancements by third parties to open source software used at Stanford (e.g., Blacklight, Hydra, Fedora). (20%)
• Assess the utility and usability of these semantic enhancements to Library information services; fine tune models, ontologies and supporting infrastructure based on these evaluations. (20%)

Qualifications:

• Demonstrated expertise with effective use of RDF, RDF-S, triplestores, and related query languages and tools.
• Expertise with REST principles and web services architectures, or the ability to quickly acquire this knowledge.
• Expertise to develop in in Ruby on Rails, both for application development and in engineering an enhanced framework, including plug-ins, engines and gems, for developing library applications, or the ability to quickly acquire expertise.
• Working knowledge of, or ability to quickly learn, relevant scripting technologies such as AJAX, Perl, Python, etc.
• Demonstrated expertise with XML and related tools and technologies
• Demonstrated ability to work collaboratively on a project, with multiple levels of staff, and colleagues at peer institutions and open source communities.
• Knowledge of agile software development practices and test driven development. Demonstrated understanding of best practices for software development, and an ability to apply those practices in a team environment.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
• Demonstrated ability to develop new programming skills quickly and to grasp unfamiliar architectures and application designs quickly.
• Masters degree or equivalent professional experience in Computer Science, Information Science or related field
• Seven or more years experience designing middleware, services or infrastructure for software systems at the 4P4 level; 5-7 years of experience for the 4P3 level.

Desired

• Experience in the digital library community
• Knowledge of library metadata standards (descriptive, technical, structural), or the ability to quickly acquire it.