Digital archiving job opportunity

[Scott Bennett <scott.bennett@YALE.EDU>]

This memo invites persons familiar with the Yale Library and with the
management of electronic journals in libraries to consider devoting a
major part of their effort in calendar year 2002 to a planning project
for the archiving of electronic journals.  Persons interested in the
work described in the following paragraphs should be in touch with me by
Monday, 30 October 2000.

Yale University Library expects to begin in January 2001 such a planning
project to design an archiving capability for the 1,100 electronic
journals published by Elsevier Science.  Elsevier will be a close
collaborator in this project, which we anticipate will be funded by the
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.  If our planning work is successful, we
may be able to start implementing it in 2002 with major start-up support
from the Mellon Foundation.  Ann Okerson and I are the co-principal
investigators for this planing project, which has been formulated in
response to the Foundation’s August invitation to the Yale Library to
participate in its Electronic Journal Archiving Project.

During the planning year, we will address a number of organizational,
reader service, copyright management, and business planning issues. 
The resolution of these issues will find expression in a computer system,
which must be conceived in the planning year.  Some parts of 
the system will also be built and tested in prototype.  To do this,
the project will employ a full-time systems officer, or a 1.0 FTE team of
systems specialists.

We wish to employ a systems officer or team for this project that is
familiar with the Yale Library and with the management of electronic
journals in libraries.  More specifically, the project will require
a broad range of analyst, programmer, and systems design and management
skills.  The project’s systems officer (or systems team) will be
expected to master the current state of thinking about the archiving of
digital information; to advise the project planning team on the technical
options for building a very large mass storage system to serve two
distinctive user groups; and to test in prototype key elements of the
systems design.  The project’s system officer (or team) will attend
pertinent professional conferences and visit laboratory or demonstration
sites where leading-edge work is being done. The systems officer (or
team) will be a key part of a high-performance project team working under
the daily guidance of Paul Conway, who will function as our .4 FTE
Project Manager.

Persons interested in the systems work described here who wish to read
the library’s proposal to the Mellon Foundation should let me know, so
that I can forward a copy of it.  I should note that while the
initial review of our proposal has been quite positive, we will not know
certainly that we have been funded until December.  I am asking
people who may be interested in this project’s system work to identify
themselves now because Ann Okerson and I am quite optimistic about the
funding and wish to get started promptly with the project.

Persons familiar with the Yale Library and the management of electronic
journals in libraries who are interested in working on this project
should send me a message stating their interest by Monday, 30 October
2000.  They should, after consulting with their supervisor, indicate
at least approximately how much time they could give to our project and
what kind of fill-in for their regular duties would be required. 
Where appropriate, some comment on the complementary skills we might need
from other individuals, to provide the full complement of talent needed
for the project, will be welcome.

I will welcome nominations of persons who should be considered for this
work, as well as direct statements of interest.