Digital Scholarship Research Coordinator.

Description

he Pennsylvania State University Libraries seeks creative, forward-thinking individuals to apply for the full-time, three-year appointment as Digital Scholarship Research Coordinator. This faculty librarian will play a critical role in project and service development to strengthen digital scholarship at Penn State. The successful candidate will be conversant with a variety of pertinent technologies and platforms and have first-hand knowledge of, and experience in, their applications for research. The Digital Scholarship Research Coordinator will have a passion for interdisciplinary, collaborative projects; value education through experimentation and prototyping; and understand the importance of humanities and social sciences scholarship and its publics.

This is a fixed-term (multi-year), non-tenure track, 3-year appointment based at the University Park campus in the Paterno and Pattee Libraries. It carries the rank of Assistant Librarian. The position reports to the Associate Director for the Center for Humanities and Information in the University Libraries and is jointly funded by the Libraries and the College of the Liberal Arts.

The Digital Scholarship Research Coordinator will oversee digital scholarship projects originating in the College of the Liberal Arts, ensuring that researchers have the technical and intellectual support (from the Libraries or other relevant campus units) to carry out and complete their work. This position is expected to raise the profile of digital scholarship in the humanities and social sciences at Penn State and to sustain the digital scholarship community through outreach and events such as workshops and speaker series. The successful candidate will be able to communicate, translate, and share ideas and concepts effectively across diverse, interdisciplinary audiences. The Digital Scholarship Research Coordinator will maintain currency in the field and may pursue their own research to do so. The person in this role will engage in national and/or international initiatives or other professional activities promoting the development of a shared infrastructure.

Responsibilities:
* Collaborates within the University Libraries and the College of the Liberal Arts to build community and promote digital scholarship across Penn State.
* Develops and conducts training, group instruction, and workshops, both individually and collaboratively, on digital scholarship research methods, tools, platforms, and best practices.
* Evaluates existing and emerging tools and technologies to inform decision-making around technology and platform support, and to identify potential uses in humanities and/or social science research. Prototypes demonstration projects and/or implements tools for use by others.
* Collaborates with colleagues in the Libraries, Liberal Arts, and Information Technology Services to help ensure harmony among various technology infrastructures and needs.
* Provides consultation and, where appropriate, technical support for digital scholarship projects, including implementation of tools and/or technology, to help researchers achieve their goals.

Required Qualifications:
* Advanced degree in a humanities or social sciences field.
* Demonstrated proficiency with one or more technologies commonly used in digital humanities and/or social science projects, such as database design and development, XML-encoding, GIS, data visualization, topic modeling, or social network analysis.
* Experience with development and management of projects, grants, and/or budgets.
* Experience teaching or leading workshops on digital scholarship tools and/or methods to faculty and students.
* Experience working collaboratively with other scholars and/or with IT professionals on projects related to digital scholarship.
* Excellent communication and presentation skills.

Desired Qualifications:
* PhD in a humanities or social sciences field.
* Demonstrated ability to build and engage an active intellectual community.
* Personal research experience with tools and approaches in the digital humanities or social sciences.
* Familiarity with research library services and objectives, including scholarly communication issues and assessment practices.
* Familiarity with service and program development and implementation.
* Record of professional presentations and/or publications.

Environment:

Penn State, a land-grant institution, is a member of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC), a consortium of the Big Ten universities plus the University of Chicago. Based on current Association for Research Libraries investment rankings, Penn State is among the top ten research libraries in North America.  A Penn State student survey completed in 2014 found overall student satisfaction with the Libraries to be at the top of its category.  Collections exceed 5.8 million volumes, including more than 102,000 current serial subscriptions. The University Libraries are located at University Park and 22 other locations throughout Pennsylvania, and they serve approximately 6,000 faculty and 44,000 students at University Park, and more than 92,000 students system wide.  The University Libraries work in collaboration with multiple campus partners as part of a growing program of support for emerging scholarly communications needs.  These include the development of Publishing and Curation Services, which oversees user services for ScholarSphere, a service provided in collaboration with Information Technology Services.

The College of the Liberal Arts at Penn State is home to more than 5200 undergraduates and more than 750 graduate students in twenty-one departments in the humanities and social sciences. It serves the entire University community through its extensive general education program in which typical Penn State undergraduate students take nearly one-third of their courses. With 11 of our programs placed in the top 25 percent of their respective disciplines in the recent National Research Council rankings, the College of the Liberal Arts has emerged as a one of the nation’s premier public research liberal arts colleges.

The University Park campus is set in the State College area, a university town located in the heart of central Pennsylvania. State College offers a vibrant community with outstanding recreational facilities, a low crime rate, and excellent public schools. The campus is within a 4-hour drive to Washington D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York City, and Pittsburgh. The University Park Airport is served by three major carriers with flights to Washington, Philadelphia, and Detroit. For more information, please www.libraries.psu.edu and www.cbicc.org.

Compensation and Benefits:

Salary and rank are dependent upon qualifications.  Fringe benefits include liberal vacation, excellent insurance and health care coverage, State or TIAA-CREF retirement options, and educational privileges.  In addition, faculty in the University Libraries are afforded funds for professional development travel annually.  Faculty may be asked to travel as official representatives of the Libraries to certain events and those trips are reimbursed at full cost within limits established by the University.

Applications and all supporting materials must be submitted online.  To apply, please visit https://libraries.psu.edu/digital-scholarship-research-coordinator.  To be considered for the position, interested candidates should upload a letter of application, resume or C.V., and the names and contact information of three professional references (including email addresses).   Review of applications will begin March 28, 2016 and continue until position is filled.  Questions may be addressed to Lindsey Harter, Faculty Search Coordinator, at lap225@psu.edu.