"A centre of excellence in digital information management, providing advice and services to the library, information and cultural heritage communities."

UKOLN is based at the University of Bath.

Job Description

1. Purpose

To promote the adoption and use of two recently developed metadata application profiles

To support their use within the UK academic community

2. Reporting Structure

The post-holder will be a member of the UKOLN Research and Development Team, and will report to the Team Leader.

The post-holder will work closely with JISC Programme Managers in the Repositories and Preservation strand of the Capital Programme and the JISC Digital Repositories activity in particular.

3. Tasks and Responsibilities

This post will be concerned with working towards establishing the wide adoption of two new metadata application profiles of Dublin Core: the Scholarly Works Application Profile (SWAP) and a proposed Geo-spatial application profile. The post-holder will work with data and service providers across the JISC Information Environment to ensure that the application profiles are fit-for-purpose and to encourage the community to adopt them. To achieve this, the post-holder will need to demonstrate to relevant stakeholders that it is easy to deposit, manage, share and use objects using the application profiles and the services that exploit them.

Supporting these aims will require the following:

• The adaptation (or further development) of the software used to hold and share relevant material to include the ability to capture and manage metadata adhering to these application profiles.
• The development and implementation of methods and procedures that will make it as easy as possible for the relevant metadata to be added (e.g. by depositors)
• The promotion of the application profile so that depositors and other stakeholders understand the benefits of adding the relevant metadata
• The software that is used to hold and share materials described using the application profiles will need to be able to share the resulting metadata in a consistent way
• Service providers will need to create value-added services based on the different types of metadata made available via the application profiles

Research activities

To this end, the post-holder will be expected to engage in the following activities:

• Liaising with institutional repository administrators, service providers and software developers to ensure that the profiles are fit for purpose. In the case of the GeoLocation application profile, the post-holder will also be expected to work closely with EDINA.
• Creating and distributing documentation and promotional materials, showing the benefits of working with the application profiles.
• Examining the potential role of the Application Profiles in aiding teaching and learning / staff-student sharing
• Exploring with stakeholders the possibilities for automatic metadata creation (based on object content or context)
• Working at an international level, establishing links with other relevant work undertaken by stakeholders (e.g. DCMI) to embed the Application Profile in DCMI
• Evaluating the need for formal training to aid the embedding of the profiles into the academic community
• The post holder will need to liaise with a colleague working on a related post at TASI (Technical Advisory Service for Images), to reflect on and document lessons learned that would be valuable for other projects
• The post-holder will also need to liaise closely with the IEMSR project, which is establishing a focus for the JISC Information Environment’s use and development of metadata application profiles.

Project Management and Communications

• Providing regular reports to the JISC
• Participation in project meetings
• Supporting communication between partners, through the use of e-mail, conference calls, etc.
• Engaging with other relevant JISC activities
• Facilitating communication and co-operation with the wider research and development community.

Dissemination

To contribute content to project Web sites
• To present at JISC programme meetings and other JISC events
• To produce journal papers, reports and other outputs
• To deliver presentations at workshops and conferences in the UK and elsewhere, to inform the international digital library research and development community

General

• To contribute expert input to other R&D projects as and when required by the Director
• To contribute to internal UKOLN strategy and policy discussions.

This post is funded directly by the JISC, and will be hosted by UKOLN.

4. Equal Opportunities

The post holder will carry out their job responsibilities with due regard to the University of Bath’s Equal Opportunities policy.

5. Terms and Conditions

These will be stated in the Contract of Employment.