SHARE is accepting applications through Monday, March 21, 2016, for the first group of 20 curation associates, whose appointments will run July 2016–July 2017. The SHARE Curation Associates program provides an opportunity for library professionals to develop digital curation and computational thinking skills to enhance local institutional repositories in a service-learning setting. Together, we can advance library digital competencies and move scholarly communications forward—and we need people who are passionate about that!
Program Description
This initiative will train a cohort of library professionals on how to curate digital records and develop digital competencies to enhance local institutional repositories. SHARE is leading this initiative in order to involve experts in the curation of local institutional repository/SHARE metadata, and to use a “train the trainer” model to expand community involvement while growing digital curation skills. The program will involve a mixture of synchronous and asynchronous learning opportunities and a modest commitment to participate in the SHARE initiative.
Why should I get involved?
Curation associates will gain experience in computational thinking and broad technical curation competencies, such as programming skills, data visualization, metadata interoperability/normalization, and hands-on experience with additional metadata enhancements.
The skills learned in this program are highly transferable to the home institution (e.g., digital scholarship service) and result in round-trip (from local repository to SHARE and back) metadata enhancements and curation.
Target Audience/Participants
The SHARE Curation Associates program is seeking library staff working in such areas as:
- Metadata
- Digital initiatives and/or digital scholarship
- Repository
What will associates learn?
Curation associates will learn information extraction through application programming interfaces (API) and OAI-PMH feeds, building content harvesters, basic programming in the Python programming language, and methods and tools to automate data cleaning and metadata enhancements (using programming scripts and/or OpenRefine). Tools and approaches will be tiered based on associates’ incoming skills and interests. All tools used will be open source.
Associate Responsibilities
- Attend a training and focus group session at the Center for Open Science offices in Charlottesville, Virginia, on July 14-15, 2016. Associates will also be welcome to attend a SHARE hackathon and community meeting that week in Charlottesville.
- Upon training completion:
- Associates will conduct at least two additional SHARE curation trainings, at local workshops/conferences/webinars within their region within 12 months OR host a curate-a-thon within their region within 12 months.
- Associates will commit to spending two to three hours per week curating, linking, and/or enhancing the SHARE data set from their home institution or working on their home institution’s feed into SHARE.
Costs
There is no cost for associates to attend the in-person training, but associates (or their institutions) will be responsible for travel and hotel expenses in Charlottesville, with most meals provided by the program. Limited travel support is available.
Application Process
Library directors should send applications to info@www.share-research.org by 11:59 p.m. eastern daylight time on Monday, March 21, 2016.
Each application should include:
- Name of recommended participant
- Indication of whether or not the associate would need travel and/or housing support for the July 14-15, 2016, training in Charlottesville, Virginia
- An up-to-date résumé for the recommended participant
- A brief statement describing (1) the value the associate would derive from participating in this program and (2) the value this training would provide to the home institution