[Metadatalibrarians] Metadata Internship Opportunity at University of Chicago Library

[Thomas Dousa]

Dear Colleagues,

The University of Chicago Library is pleased to offer our summer Mary and
Samuel Somit Preservation Internship.  This year, our focus is a metadata
project for audio recordings.  Please share the following announcement with
interested colleagues and students.

Cordially,

Thomas M. Dousa
Metadata Analyst Librarian
The University of Chicago Library

_________________________________________________________




*The Mary and Samuel Somit Preservation InternshipThe University of Chicago
Library*

The University of Chicago Library is accepting applications for the 2018 Mary
and Samuel Somit Preservation Internship. This Internship, established in
2006, has been made possible through the generosity of Dr. Albert Somit (AB
'41, PhD '47), University of Chicago alumnus and past president of Southern
Illinois University. Dr. Somit has established the Internship to honor his
parents’ legacy, serve the needs of the Library’s collection, and prepare
individuals for important work to preserve library materials and other
scholarly works in all formats so that they are available for research and
teaching.


*Internship, Summer 2018*



The six-week Internship is intended to provide firsthand experience and a
broader understanding of the care, treatment, and accessibility of library
and archives materials in a large research library. The intern will work
with the Preservation Librarian and other Department managers to learn
about the operations, issues, and challenges of a comprehensive
preservation and access program. Technical Services, the Digital Library
Development Center, and the Special Collections Research Center are all
partners in the Library’s preservation initiatives.  Under the guidance of
the Preservation Librarian and other professional staff, the intern will
undertake a project and prepare a final report.  During the internship, the
intern will have the opportunity to collaborate with other library staff
and give a presentation about the project and its findings.



*Audio Recordings Description Project*



Under the direction of the Preservation Librarian and the Metadata Analyst
Librarian, the Intern will focus on a review and analysis of descriptive
and administrative metadata for sound recordings held by the University of
Chicago’s Digital Media Archive (DMA).  The DMA holds an extensive
collection of audio and some video recordings primarily created by
University of Chicago faculty in the course of their research.  The
collection includes over 180 languages and dialects as well as ethnographic
music recordings.  Collections reflect the teaching and scholarly interests
of faculty and researchers who have worked at the University of Chicago
over the past eighty years, and are of great research interest to
linguists*, anthropologists,
and ethnomusicologists.  *One of the Archive’s distinctive collections is
the Mesoamerican Collection which includes field recordings from the 1930 –
1990s of the many dialects and endangered languages throughout Central
America.  The University of Chicago Library also holds several paper-based
archival collections that are closely related to the DMA’s Mesoamerican
Collection of recordings*.  The majority of recordings in the Digital Media
Archive have been converted to digital form and some are available on the
web (see **http://dma.uchicago.edu/* <http://dma.uchicago.edu/> for a
fuller description and catalog of the DMA materials).



The goal of the project is to perform a critical assessment of the existing
descriptive metadata that has been created for these language recordings.
Work will contribute to development of metadata guidelines for media
collections that will enable the Library to ingest the collection into the
Library’s Digital Repository, provide online access, and ensure its
integration into and compatibility with the discovery systems for digital
collections of other types and formats.  This project will support future
planning for the delivery of both public and restricted media collections
and the ability to share standardized metadata more broadly.



Tasks during the internship may include:



·      Examining current metadata and controlled vocabulary used in the
Archive

·      Reviewing of metadata schemas in use for the Library’s existing
digital collections and for similar collections at selected other
institutions

·      Making recommendations for the use of existing metadata, methods for
crosswalking to other schemas, enhancement of metadata with additional data
(such as ISO language codes), or adoption of additional standards

·      Preparing a final report about the work of the project and
recommendations

·      To the extent possible, making some desired changes or enhancements
to metadata; identifying relationships and ways to connect the DMA
collections to related Library collections; providing inventories of other
media collections for digital conversion

During the project, the intern will have the opportunity to collaborate
with Preservation, Technical Services, and IT and Digital Scholarship staff.


*Eligibility and Requirements*


The Internship is open to recent graduates and currently enrolled students
of a recognized library school of information or related program; or
students with equivalent experience and training in preservation, digital
collections and metadata.  Whether through coursework or previous practical
application, the Somit intern must be familiar with preservation
principles, and the creation and management of metadata for media
collections. The applicant should possess the ability to work
collaboratively and independently to accomplish project goals. Familiarity
with spreadsheets, databases, and metadata schemas for media collections is
highly desirable.  Background in linguistics or anthropology is a plus, but
language expertise is not required.


*The 2018 Internship provides a $4,000 stipend.*


To apply for the Internship, individuals should electronically submit a
letter of application, resume, list of completed relevant coursework or
training, and contact information (name and email address) for two
professional references. To be considered, individuals must currently be
authorized to work permanently in the US, and be able to commit to six
consecutive weeks of full-time work between approximately June 4th and
August 31st.



The University of Chicago is an Affirmative Action / Equal Opportunity
<http://humanresources.uchicago.edu/fpg/policies/200/p201.shtml> / Disabled
/ Veterans Employer.



*The deadline for applications is Monday, March 5th, 2018.*



Submit electronic applications to:

somitinternship at lib.uchicago.edu



For more information please see our Somit Preservation Internship website (
https://www.lib.uchicago.edu/about/directory/departments/pres/somit/) or
contact:



Sherry Byrne, Preservation Librarian

University of Chicago Library

sbyr at uchicago.edu