OCLC Research - 1 Year Internship

Description

Note: Due March 21st!

OCLC Research is recruiting for a full-time, one-year position. Both master’s and Ph.D. graduates are encouraged to apply.

OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc. is a nonprofit, membership, computer library service and research organization dedicated to the public purposes of furthering access to the world’s information and reducing information costs. Tens of thousands of libraries around the world use OCLC services to locate, acquire, catalog, lend and preserve library materials. We are currently seeking individuals for a position at our Dublin, Ohio, office.

The OCLC Research mission is to expand knowledge that advances OCLC’s public purposes of furthering access to the worlds’ information and reducing library costs. The individual will have the opportunity to work on projects in two research activity areas. The first, Advancing the Research Mission, addresses OCLC’s interest in understanding and shaping how library services are changing and a responsibility to help libraries plan for and manage these changes.  Projects in this area aim to understand the ways that libraries can have maximum impact in providing support to academic departments.  The second, User Behavior Studies and Synthesis, focuses on library users’ behaviors to determine their perceptions and information usage habits. The objective is to identify and share recommendations on how to better serve library users’ needs now and in the future.

Working on projects in these two activity areas, the individual is expected to actively engage with OCLC Research teams to address the challenges facing libraries and archives in a rapidly changing information technology environment. Current research projects underway that the individual might assist with include:

• The Visitors and Residents Project is designed to increase understanding of how learners engage with the Web and how educational services and systems can attract and sustain a possible new group of lifelong learners. A trans-Atlantic partnership, the project supports comparison of students’ digital learning strategies in different cultural contexts. (http://www.oclc.org/research/activities/vandr/)
• The Cyber Synergy Project investigates the possibility of seamless collaboration between knowledge institutions such as libraries and the Social Q&A (SQA) community. (http://www.oclc.org/research/activities/synergy/default.htm)
• The Dissemination for Information Packages for Information Reuse (DIPIR) Project is exploring how to facilitate the reuse of digital data and collection to identify how contextual information about the data that supports reuse can best be created and preserved. (http://www.dipir.org)
• The Librarians and Data Management project is examining the management of research data from the academic librarians’ point of view. The aim is to inform the development of effective social and technical infrastructures (e.g. education, training, systems, services, etc.) that support librarians who have this new responsibility.