The UCSF Library Archives and Special Collections (ASC) is seeking applicants for an eight-week remote paid fellowship to support computational research using ASC’s digital collections. The fellow will take a leading role in a collaborative data project jointly mentored by ASC, the UCSF Industry Documents Library (IDL), and the UCSF Library Data Science and Open Scholarship (DSOS) teams. There will also be opportunities to develop computational analysis skills for digital health humanities research, attend data science courses, and participate in staff meetings.
About Archives and Special Collections
UCSF Archives and Special Collections is a dynamic health sciences research center that contributes to innovative scholarship, actively engages users through educational activities, preserves past knowledge, enables collaborative research experiences to address contemporary challenges, and translates scientific research into patient care.
Fellowship structure and support
The fellow will design a summer project using data from ASC’s digital collections in consultation with the fellowship supervisor. Some project examples include text recognition/extraction, audio transcription and annotation, image classification, or using UCSF Versa API to extract summaries and topics. The fellow will be supported in identifying their project goal, defining an eight-week project scope, and developing tasks and timelines that enable them to learn and apply data science and digital health humanities tools and methodologies.
At the end of the project, the fellow will deliver a 15-minute live presentation via Zoom to UCSF Library staff. The fellow will also share their findings in a written report that will be published on the ASC blog.
Learning opportunities
- Build natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning skills.
- Design and execute a data project and present findings.
- Explore digital archival methods and practices.
- Participate in staff meetings, one hour long, once a week.
- Attend data science and digital health humanities workshops and classes (in-person and virtual options available).
- Receive mentorship and training from data scientists, programmers, archivists, and librarians.
Necessary skills
Applicants must be enrolled in an undergraduate or graduate degree program.
- Interest in digital curation and collection building for libraries and archives.
- Excellent interpersonal, analytical, and writing skills.
- High level of accuracy and attention to detail.
- Ability to work independently.
- Proficiency in one of the following programming languages preferred: Python, R, Java.
- Familiarity with natural language processing (NLP) tools preferred.
- Two years or more of programming knowledge/experience preferred.
Compensation and work environment
This eight-week fellowship is fully remote with 20-35 hours of work per week. Work hours are flexible and can be arranged to suit student schedules and course requirements (if applicable). The ideal start date is June 10, 2024. The expected pay rate for this position is $23 to $25 per hour.
How to apply
Please email a cover letter, contact information (name, email, and phone number) for two references, and your resume to Lisa Nguyen, digital archivist, at lisa.nguyen2@ucsf.edu. The initial review date for this position was March 29, 2024, but applications are now closed.