The Cornell University Library Digital Scholarship Services unit is seeking applications for a Collections As Data Librarian.
The Opportunity: We are looking for someone who will help students and scholars become more confident and critical users of digital technologies in public-facing scholarship, such as digital collections, interactive data visualizations, collections-as-data strategies, community archives, and other emerging forms of digital scholarly publishing. We want you to have some technical experience, and enthusiasm for building more experience on the job. But most importantly, we want you to bring a wide-ranging curiosity, a dedication to helping varied learners develop and grow, and a desire to help build an equitable and interdisciplinary collective for applied information science within the Library.
If this sounds like you, we’d love to talk.
We know that no single digital technologies professional can specialize in everything. The person in this position will be a key member of Digital Scholarship Services and the Digital CoLab team, but at the Library, we work together across departments, and across campus, to solve problems, learn new skills, and support each another’s work. If this position sounds good to you, please don’t allow fear of not having enough digital skills get in the way of applying.
Our Vision: Empowering Cornell’s research and learning community with deep expertise, innovative services, and outstanding collections strengthened by strategic partnerships.
Our Mission: Cornell University Library promotes a culture of broad inquiry and supports the University’s mission to discover, preserve, and disseminate knowledge and creative expression. It engages with the ongoing transformations of society to deliver world-class physical and digital content and services critical to research, education, and outreach, now and in the future. The Library acts globally, supporting Cornell’s land grant mission in New York State and beyond, and builds partnerships within and outside the university. It invests in its staff, collections, and physical and virtual libraries. And, it serves as a neutral and trusted party supporting information access and scholarly communication.
Candidate Profile:
• A demonstrated interest in applying digital skills to challenges researchers and students face when they work to expand the availability of collections, data, and other primary and secondary research sources to diverse audiences of scholars, students, community researchers, and/or other engaged publics. Right at this moment, you probably don’t have all the technical skills you want to have, but you’re enthusiastic about learning new ones, and you’re able to orient to the basics of new tools pretty quickly. You’re comfortable saying, “I don’t know, but let’s work on it together.” You like to dig.
• Experience with one or more tools or approaches that support emerging practices for creating public-facing digital scholarship. Some possible examples:
o Principles of and tools for web development. Examples might include static site generators, content management systems, and/or programming languages
o Building relational databases and creating data models
o Principles of and tools for data visualization
o Designing digital interfaces or digital interactions
o Designing metadata schema and standards for digital collections
o Protecting the privacy and safety of publicly engaged scholars
The exact mix of skills that you develop over time will depend on your interests and the ongoing needs of Cornell researchers.
• An ability to meet both students and scholars wherever they are in their learning process, and a desire to help them grow. You have experience in some form of building connection and community. For example, this could be in education, mentoring, consulting, outreach, or another form of engagement.
• Good communication skills, especially when it comes to discussing complex ideas with various audiences. You can get a point across, and you’re also a good listener.
• Knowledge of ways that the histories and experiences of minoritized groups have been marginalized in institutional research collections. You have some ideas about how best to create digital access to research materials justly and inclusively, and a sensitivity for ways that racism and sexism can appear in data collection and analysis, in the impact of algorithms, and in practices of digital surveillance and privacy.
• A graduate degree. It might be in Library or Information Science, or it might be in something else entirely. It needs to be completed by the time you start the position, and no later than August 2024.
This position is located in Ithaca, New York. The selected candidate will be expected to work on the Ithaca campus.
Diversity and Inclusion: As a university founded to be a place where “…any person can find instruction in any study,” diversity and inclusion are at the core of our values and mission. We strive to be a welcoming, caring, healthy, and equitable community where students, faculty, and staff with different backgrounds, perspectives, abilities, and experiences can learn, innovate, and work in an environment of respect, and feel empowered to engage in any community conversation. As a member of the Cornell University community, it is important to recognize our shared responsibility to each other to cultivate a culture of inclusion for all. Cornell Core values.
Benefits: Our comprehensive benefits package includes 22 vacation days, 13 paid holidays, health insurance, life insurance, university retirement contributions, childcare and adoption assistance, and child tuition reimbursement. Funding is available to support professional training and research. More information regarding Cornell’s generous contract college benefits can be found via this web-site. The anticipated academic rank for this appointment is Assistant Librarian, with an anticipated salary range of $61,000-$67,000.
Relocation assistance may be provided.
Visa sponsorship is not available for this position.
How to Apply: All candidates must apply online via the Cornell Careers site. See job requisition WDR-00044610. For full consideration, please include the following with your application:
1. A cover letter;
2. A Curriculum Vitae;
3. A statement supporting diverse communities which may be incorporated into the cover letter or presented as a separate statement. Candidates are invited to outline their experiences and approaches to working with diverse communities through their research, teaching and service. Guidelines for candidates are here.
Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis until a viable pool of applicants is identified; early submission is strongly encouraged. Although we prefer to receive your application as one, multi-page pdf document, we will accept multiple documents in other formats.