University of Notre Dame
NOTE: This position has been filled.
Data Services Postdoctoral Fellow or Research Data Curation Postdoctoral Fellow
The University will fill one of the following two positions, depending upon the selected candidate's qualifications and experience.
Position One: Data Services Postdoctoral Fellow
Supervisor
Reporting to Cheri Smith, Associate Librarian, Program Director for Science, Engineering, Social Sciences and Business Research Services and Rick Johnson, Interim Digital Library Initiatives and Scholarship Program Director.
Discipline(s)
The primary academic departments served will be Sociology, Psychology, Anthropology, Economics, Political Science, and Education, and related institutes. There may also be some work with the College of Business, the College of Science, or the College of Engineering, but the work will mainly focus on the social sciences.
Objective
The University of Notre Dame seeks to appoint a Data Services Postdoctoral Fellow to work closely with library and teaching and research faculty to select, acquire, manage, deliver, and store numeric data collections to support campus research and scholarship.
Key responsibilities
Reporting to the Program Director for Digital Initiatives and Scholarship and the Program Director for Science, Engineering, Social Sciences and Business Research Services, the Fellow will build data collections and facilitate access to additional data resources; engage in outreach to faculty and students through subject and departmental liaison activities; design and conduct data literacy and data visualization instruction; participate in reference and consultation services; provide and develop innovative services in support of research, teaching, and learning; and teach research strategies in a variety of contexts, including possibly creating credit bearing courses in data literacy and/or data visualization, if desired. Duties will also include analyzing, converting, sub‐setting and storing data from existing sources for reuse in the teaching and research context.
In addition to data instruction and consultation, the fellow will also assist in data management planning and consultation for social sciences (and perhaps other) faculty, and will train other librarians to assist with data management planning. The Fellow will collaborate with subject librarians to evaluate the library’s ability to acquire, organize, and distribute social science data, make recommendations for hardware and software acquisitions, and will help determine future directions the library should take to improve data services on campus. He or she will assist in the development of a data services plan for the Hesburgh libraries, and will participate in committees, activities, and special projects, especially those involving new technologies and data, and develop and maintain awareness of data‐centered initiatives across the sciences and social sciences through professional development activities.
Requirements
- PhD in a discipline relevant to the social sciences such as Economics, Political Science, Education, or Sociology;
- Strong analytical skills;
- Demonstrated ability to work independently and collaboratively in a complex organization;
- Experience locating and analyzing a wide variety of social sciences data;
- Experience in working with large datasets;
- Working knowledge of at least two statistical analysis software packages, such as R, SPSS or Stata;
- Experience developing and delivering formal instruction, workshops and one‐on-one consultation sessions. Experience providing instruction on locating and using data highly desired;
- Knowledge of trends in data management and description.
Position Two: Research Data Curation Postdoctoral Fellow
Supervisor
Associate University Librarian, Digital Access, Resources & Information Technology Division.
Discipline(s)
The primary academic departments served include the College of Science (Applied and Computational Mathematics & Statistics, Mathematics, Biological Sciences, Chemistry, Physics), and the College of Engineering. Key campus partners include the Center for Social Research, Center for Research Computing, Office of Research, the Kaneb Center and DigitalND Office.
Position Description
The University of Notre Dame Hesburgh Library seeks a Data Curation Postdoctoral Fellow for a two-year appointment as a key participant in its actively developing e‐research program. The Data Curation Fellow will work closely with the Library eResearch Team and other campus partners, providing a bridge between faculty and graduate student researcher, subject librarians, and digital repository services. The eResearch Team brings together leadership from the Library Digital Initiatives Program and the Science, Engineering & Social Sciences Services Program to implement and promote data curation technologies, data management planning, and enhancements of the library digital repository environment. The ideal candidate will have experience with data‐intensive research and understanding of data management strategies and requirements. The CLIR Fellowship provides an exciting opportunity to collaborate with faculty, graduate students and data management units across the university.
Responsibilities
As a member of the eResearch Team, the Fellow proactively contributes to and provides leadership for further development of desirable outreach services for research data management, building productive collaboration with university partners such as the Center for Social Research, Center for Research Computing, and Office of Research. The Fellow will work with subject librarians to build data management liaison relationships in targeted academic departments, promoting services such as individual data management consultation and workshops for faculty and graduate students, guidance about related copyright issues, and academic presentations and symposia in areas of digital and data management and curation. The Fellow may have an opportunity to teach or assist with course‐related sessions on the role of data curation in research. In order to better leverage community tools such as the DMPTool and EZID, the Fellow will play an important role in enhancing the Notre Dame instance of the DMPTool, providing appropriate examples and guidelines for specific grant directorates.
The Fellow will work closely with members of the Digital Library Initiatives and Scholarship Program to define desirable digital repository workflows and enhancements for data management. Metadata or programming knowledge will be especially useful in this aspect of the position.
Finally, the fellow will contribute to outreach initiatives to identify new data curation opportunities on campus
Required qualifications
- Ph.D. in a science or social science discipline, with research project experience organizing and managing data;
- Excellent interpersonal communication skills and teaching skills;
- Desire to champion new partnerships and services on campus, advocating for new data management solutions and technologies;
- Awareness of legal and technical issues related to data management, such as preservation, format migration, retrieval, and managing access to sensitive data;
- Strong project management experience.
Preferred qualifications
- Understanding of data‐mining technologies and concepts
- Experience with XML and metadata use related to digital access
- Experience writing grants, and familiarity with funding agencies such as NSF, NIH, and NEH
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