[Metadatalibrarians] Fellowship Positing: Wikidata Fellow at UNC Charlotte

[Joseph Nicholson]

Please excuse cross postings.


Atkins Library at UNC Charlotte is accepting applications for our Atkins
Fellows summer program. *Applications submitted by February 7, 2022 will
receive first consideration*. These fellowships are designed to give LIS
students hands-on experience in an academic library.

The Atkins Fellows program <http://library.charlotte.edu/atkinsfellows/> is
a ten-week paid summer fellowship for students at the mid-point of their
Library, Archives, or Information Science degree program, or those within
one year of having completed such a program. The program is designed to
provide fellows with a work experience that is focused on
professional-level tasks, with high levels of independence and creativity.
The three projects proposed for 2022 include library work with digital
humanities, open access, and wikidata. Fellows will also have the
opportunity to attend workshops, job talks, and conferences, as well as job
shadow and participate in library meetings. Through this experience,
Fellows will learn about the operations of an academic library, better
preparing them for work opportunities in the profession. Participants in
this program will receive a $8,000 stipend, paid at an hourly rate
($20/hour, for ten weeks of forty hours per week). This year, we are
excited to be able to offer program participants an additional $1500
housing and transportation stipend to help with the cost of moving to
Charlotte for the summer.

Want to learn more about the program? Visit our website
<http://library.charlotte.edu/atkinsfellows/> and watch a recording of a
recent informational session hosted by the program coordinator (also
accessible from our website).

Please follow us on Twitter @atkinsfellow <https://twitter.com/atkinsfellow>
for program updates, and email the program coordinator, Amanda Binder (
abinder3 at uncc.edu) with any questions.

About UNC Charlotte and Charlotte, NC

With current enrollment at nearly 30,000, UNC Charlotte is the fastest
growing campus in the UNC system, and Charlotte is one of the fastest
growing cities in the United States. Participating fellows will be able to
enjoy an extension to our light rail system
<https://lightrail.charlotte.edu/> that will transport you from the
university to many of the most popular neighborhoods in the city. As North
Carolina’s urban research university, we provide access to all of the
amenities expected of a city, including sports and music venues, museums
and galleries, restaurants, coffee shops, and breweries, while still within
driving distance to the mountains and the ocean. This is an exciting time
to live in Charlotte and work at Atkins Library and we hope you will
consider joining us this summer!
Wikidata Fellow - Apply Now <https://jobs.charlotte.edu/postings/38760>

Wikidata, a freely available platform for creating and publishing linked,
open data on the web, is increasingly used in academic libraries as an
identity management and authority control tool that supplements traditional
methods of managing data about people, places, topics, and library
collections. Having created thousands of Wikidata items for UNC Charlotte
faculty members, electronic theses and dissertations, and local people and
places as a participant in the PCC Wikidata Pilot project
<https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikiProject_PCC_Wikidata_Pilot> during
2020-2021, Atkins Library now seeks to integrate Wikidata as an ongoing
component of its metadata operations. The Atkins Wikidata Fellow will
assist in developing and expanding Atkins Library’s Wikidata program by
creating workflows for batch processing of Wikidata, using automated tools
to ingest and edit Wikidata, and performing outreach to constituencies
within Atkins and beyond who may be interested in contributing to the
initiative. The focus of the program will be materials from Special
Collections and University Archives and names data.

The Fellow in this position will gain expertise in using this free and open
knowledge base that is rapidly becoming ubiquitous in academic libraries,
hands-on experience in creating linked data and designing metadata
workflows, and familiarity with tools and techniques for batch processing
Wikidata. They will also develop an understanding of Wikidata’s
relationship to other technical services’ workflows in academic libraries
such as metadata creation and authority control, which it supplements and
extends. The experience will prepare the Fellow for a variety of positions
in cataloging, metadata, digital initiatives, and archives and special
collections.

Preferred Education/Training, Experience, Skills/Competencies:

   - Interest in and experience or coursework in cataloging and metadata,
   authority control, archives and special collections
   - Aptitude for finely-detailed work
   - Ability to learn and use new technologies
   - Familiarity with spreadsheets, OpenRefine, and scripting languages
   would be helpful, but training will be offered

Duties and Responsibilities:

   - Develop, expand, and accelerate Atkins Library’s Wikidata program by
   creating workflows for batch processing of Wikidata using automated tools
   such as QuickStatements and OpenRefine to ingest and edit Wikidata and
   performing outreach to constituencies within Atkins and beyond who may be
   interested in contributing to the initiative.
   - Migrate legacy personal and corporate names data to a new locally
   hosted Wikibase instance and assist partner institutions in contributing
   their own name data.
   - Assist with developing a data model for Atkins names and mapping
   Wikibase properties to standard Wikidata properties.
   - Experiment with ingesting data into Wikibase with QuickStatements and
   other tools.
   - Devise and document workflows and properties for ingesting new data
   and maintaining/editing data.