University of California Los Angeles (UCLA)
NOTE: All postdoctoral fellowship positions are contingent upon funding. Applications are accepted via CLIR's online application system. Review of applications is already underway, but applications will be accepted until all positions are filled.
UCLA Library CLIR Postdoctoral Fellowship 2013-2014: Languages, Cultures, Research Data
The UCLA Library offers a one year opportunity for a CLIR Postdoctoral Fellow, with possible renewal for one year. Past UCLA CLIR Postdoctoral Fellows have brought language, community, and cultural resources to bear to digitize and make accessible some of the most unique of the UCLA Library’s materials, from contemporary and historical Armenian printed works, to medieval Arabic manuscripts. Others have combined their knowledge of ancient and diasporic languages and peoples to reach out to the Los Angeles community, on behalf of the Library. In addition, others have provided digital expertise in archiving and organizing visual collections of images or film, or mapping Arab Spring tweets from Cairo.
The UCLA Library is most interested in applications from potential CLIR Postdoctoral Fellows who have expertise in Hebrew, Arabic, or Latin American languages and cultures. We have a specific need for someone who can participate in organizing and digitizing Hebrew language ephemera. Opportunities may be possible for those who are able to read and organize the largest repository of Ethiopic manuscripts in North America.
The UCLA Library is also interested in those who desire to teach undergraduates with primary sources—and develop methodologies to teach others how to do so. We are interested in those who desire to study the use of data in scholarship by faculty members in digital humanities and social sciences, and to investigate methods for embedding this content in publications, or in the Library’s role in providing long term preservation of such data.
Required:
Fluent reading and writing knowledge of at least one of the following: Hebrew, Arabic, Spanish, or Portuguese—as well as classical and ancient languages.
Subject expertise highlighting cultural, historical, political, and related knowledge of at least one of the following: the Middle East, Latin America, Asia, and Africa.
Alternatively, applicants may demonstrate extensive research experience and practice in data management and data management planning.
Preferred:
Experience working with digitized collections and collections of data, especially experience in preparing collections for digitization, digitizing collections, and resolving issues with metadata and searching in digitized collections. Experience in resolving problems related to organizing, preserving, and publishing products from data in digital research is highly desirable, as is knowledge and practice in teaching with primary materials and data from researchers as well as from commercial sources.
Fluent speaking, reading, and writing knowledge of the languages listed above.
About UCLA and the UCLA Library:
UCLA is one of the leading public research universities in the United States. It ranks among the nation’s top five institutions in research funding. UCLA is one of the top 10 universities in the country in the number of doctoral degrees it awards each year, and among the top 25 for professional degrees. The university includes more than 100 separate academic programs and 11 professional schools.
Ranked among the top 10 academic research libraries in North America, the UCLA Library houses one of the most comprehensive and highly used collections in the world, with more than 9 million volumes, tens of thousands of serial subscriptions, and extensive online academic resources to which the library subscribes for the benefit of the university community. UCLA students have access to the holdings of all of the University of California libraries, which are collectively second in size only to those of the Library of Congress.
The UCLA Library’s extensive Digital Library Program (DLP) serves as the catalyst for the creation, management, and delivery of digital content in support of the UCLA Library’s mission and goals (http://www.library.ucla.edu/libraries/2627.cfm). The DLP provides for the storage and dissemination of digital objects, including text, images, audio, data files, and video in their various digital manifestations and combinations. The UCLA Library provides a web presence for digital collections and provides storage, backup, and digital preservation support for all digital content accepted into, or developed by, the library. The DLP grows in scope daily and currently includes approximately 735,000 digital objects.
By definition, ephemera constitute a special collection. UCLA’s Library Special Collections (LSC) is recognized internationally as being one of the largest and most distinguished repositories in the United States for archival collections, rare books and manuscripts, historic photographs, audiovisual materials, maps, oral histories, ephemera, and other types of special research materials (http://www.library.ucla.edu/libraries/special.cfm). It includes the notable Center for Oral History (http://oralhistory.library.ucla.edu), the collections of which include testimonies of immigrant and ethnic populations in Los Angeles.
UCLA’s LSC includes extensive collections supporting area studies and international development. It is noted for materials relating to Africa, the Middle East and Judaica, South America, and Asia. These area studies special collections are managed by subject and language specialists. The Asia collections are complemented by rare Chinese, Japanese, and Korean language materials managed by specialists in the East Asian Library, the tenth largest in the United States (http://www.library.ucla.edu/libraries/eastasian/library-collections). The DEP will be situated amongst important and complementary resources, facilitating international global scholarship. The DEP will also serve as a foundational collection in terms of our building future resources in related areas.