Position Available: This position is available as soon as possible. This is a 100% time, permanent, twelve month, two-year visiting appointment in the University Library.
The University of Illinois is an Equal Opportunity, Affirmative Action employer. Minorities, women, veterans and individuals with disabilities are encouraged to apply. For more information, visit http://go.illinois.edu/
Responsibilities: The University Library at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is looking for a collaborative research programmer excited about researching and developing new models of digital publishing for innovative, multimodal work in conversation with the open source community.
Reporting to the Manager of Scholarly Communication and Repository Services (SCARS) team in Library IT and working closely with the Head of Scholarly Communication and Publishing, the Visiting Research Programmer will play a key role in research development and systems administration of open source software used by the library publishing service, the Illinois Open Publishing Network (IOPN). The individual in this role will also consult with authors and editors as needed to resolve technical problems with library publishing systems for books, journals and open educational resources, and will implement technical solutions to publishing problems that arise in the creation of these multimodal, nontraditional works where the form of the digital publication relates closely to the research argumentation. The programmer will additionally use their expertise related to publishing systems to collaborate with the publishing team on development and documentation of workflows and policies related to the publishing service. The research programmer will contribute to a research agenda related to developing new models of digital publishing through systems development as well as investigation time, initially through the Mellon-funded Publishing Without Walls research initiative.
The University Library of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign values diversity of thought, perspective, experience and people, and is actively committed to a culture of inclusion and respect. We are dedicated to the practices of social justice, diversity, and equality, and strive to overcome historical and divisive biases in our society and embrace diverse points of view as assets to the fabric of our community. All positions will be called on to contribute to building this environment in the Library and throughout the campus community, and we encourage candidates to apply who share these values.
Specific responsibilities include:
– Consulting on technical requirements for advanced digital research and publication projects; researching, implementing, and developing identified new features and improvements to open source publishing tools used by IOPN; and contributing those back to the relevant open source communities.
– Providing technical support to users of publishing systems, including in-house publishing staff and authors and editors of publications on IOPN platforms.
– Contribute to research into related areas of interest to help shape the future of digital publishing services, workflows, and interfaces, through Academic Professional investigation time.
– Working with editorial staff to develop and document workflows and related publishing policies for IOPN.
– Systems administration for digital publishing solutions for journal and book publishing, and multimodal publications, and cross-train colleagues in Library IT on basic system functions.
Required Qualifications:
– Graduate degree in library/information science, digital humanities, or a related humanities field such as communications, publishing, or media studies; or a graduate degree in computer science with experience in projects related to the humanities, web publishing, or a related area.
– Demonstrated familiarity with the Linux/Unix shell environments and basic Linux system operations.
– Demonstrated experience developing and maintaining interactive, data-driven Web applications using PHP.
– Demonstrated experience interacting with relational databases via SQL.
– Demonstrated experience developing and maintaining client-side Javascript Script code, including experience with the JQuery library.
– Demonstrated experience using the Git version control system.
– Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
– Demonstrated ability to work both independently as well as collaboratively in teams and with users.
– Demonstrated ability to work effectively with a diverse community.
Preferred Qualifications:
– Familiarity with academic research and publishing, including editorial processes and peer review.
– Two or more years of experience in developing and coding interactive, data-driven Web applications in PHP.
– Experience with any of the following: Apache HTTP server configuration, PHP-base MVC frameworks (e.g. Zend, CodeIgniter), or server side Javascript tools (e.g. Node.js, NPM).
– Experience with software development best practices and methodologies including scrum, test driven development, version control, and refactoring.
– Experience working with and contributing to open source software projects.
– Experience communicating technical needs and issues to non-IT staff.
Academic Professional employees are encouraged to use “investigation time” to pursue areas of interest, not directly in support of an immediate program need, in accordance with the University Library’s policy on Investigation Time for Academic Professional Employees. Some investigations originating in this manner may evolve into regular work assignments or production activities.
Environment: The University of Illinois Library at Urbana-Champaign is one of the preeminent research libraries in the world. With more than 14 million volumes and significant digital resources, it ranks second in size among academic research libraries in the United States and first among public university libraries in the world. As the intellectual heart of the campus, the Library is committed to maintaining the strongest possible collections and services and engaging in research and development activities in pursuit of the University’s mission of teaching, scholarship, and public service. The Library currently employs approximately 80 faculty and 300 academic professionals, staff, and graduate assistants. For more information, see: http://www.library.illinois.
The scope of the Scholarly Communication and Publishing unit of the library includes digital publishing, repository services (including the library’s institutional repository, IDEALS), copyright, researcher profiles, scholarly communication, and digital humanities. Librarians in the unit collaborate closely with other units in the library’s Office of Research, including the Research Data Service and Scholarly Commons, as well as with a network of subject specialists, technical services experts, and special collections librarians and archivists on projects of mutual interest. It is a partner on the Mellon-funded Publishing Without Walls grant to understand digital publishing needs of humanists and implement publishing solutions that fill those needs. The Scholarly Communication and Publishing Unit synthesizes a wide range of expertise in both traditional and non-traditional areas of library practice associated with every aspect of the scholarly communication cycle, including consultations in the preparation of scholarly articles and other outputs, consultations related to intellectual property and copyright, digital archiving of intermediate-stage scholarly work, compliance with Open Access mandates and policies, promotion of open educational resources, and establishment and maintenance of new publishing platforms and publication workflow processes for direct Open Access publishing of final-stage scholarship.
Salary and Rank: Salary commensurate with credentials and experience.
Terms of Appointment: Twelve-month appointment; 24 annual vacation days; 11 annual paid holidays; 12 annual sick-leave days (cumulative), plus an additional 13 sick-leave days (non-cumulative) available, if needed, each year; health insurance requiring a small co-payment is provided to employee (with the option to purchase coverage for spouse and dependents); required participation in State Universities Retirement System (SURS) (8% of annual salary is withheld and is refundable upon termination), with several options for participation in additional retirement plans; newly-hired employees are covered by the Medicare portion of Social Security and are subject to its deduction.
Campus and Community: The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is a comprehensive and major public land-grant university (Doctoral/Research University-Extensive) that is ranked among the best in the world. Chartered in 1867, it provides undergraduate and graduate education in more than 150 fields of study, conducts theoretical and applied research, and provides public service to the state and the nation. It employs 3,000 faculty members who serve 31,000 undergraduates and 12,000 graduate and professional students; approximately 25% of faculty receives campus-wide recognition each year for excellence in teaching. More information about the campus is available at www.illinois.edu.
The University is located in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana, which have a combined population of 100,000 and are situated about 140 miles south of Chicago, 120 miles west of Indianapolis, and 170 northeast of St. Louis. The University and its surrounding communities offer a cultural and recreational environment ideally suited to the work of a major research institution. For more information about the community, visit: http://illinois.edu/about/
To Apply: To ensure full consideration, please complete your candidate profile at https://jobs.illinois.edu and upload a letter of interest, resume, and contact information including email addresses for three professional references. Applications not submitted through this website will not be considered. For questions, please call: 217-333-8169.
Deadline: In order to ensure full consideration we urge candidates to submit application materials on or before April 19, 2019.
The University of Illinois conducts criminal background checks on all job candidates upon acceptance of a contingent offer.