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Job Description
Project Coordinator, Digitization of American Election Returns, 1788-1825
The Project:
The American Antiquarian Society (AAS), in partnership with Tufts University’s Digital Collections and Archives (DCA), has received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to continue the digitization of the Lampi Collection of American Electoral Returns, 1788-1825, and to mount the data on the AAS website where it can be freely accessed by scholars, students, journalists, politicians, government employees, genealogists, local historians, and other segments of the public. Compiled by Philip J. Lampi over the past four decades, this is the richest and most complete set of early American election returns in existence. Lampi has collected varying amounts of presidential, congressional, gubernatorial, state executive, and state legislative election returns (much of it down to the county and/or town level) for all twenty-four states in the Union by 1825. His findings include town-level data for all six New England states and local-level data for other northern states as well. The Lampi material also includes state election returns for governors, lieutenant governors, secretaries of state, state treasurers, attorneys general, state senators, and state assembly members. Also among the data are records of party labels for the elections and citations to the sources of the information. Elections during this period were frequent. The current grant will tackle the considerably more complex tasks of processing some 48,000 heretofore-unprocessed source documents (mostly photocopies of election returns Lampi found in contemporary newspapers and archival sources), and digitizing approximately 40 percent of those materials to be added to the data entered.
The Project Coordinator reports to the Project Director and will split time between the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, and Digital Collections and Archives at Tufts University, Medford.
Duties include:
• Supervision, training, and coordination of data entry staff including monitoring workflow, handling and directing questions, and facilitating scheduling with DCA staff.
• Routing requests through the JIRA issue tracking system, including referral to the appropriate person for response and ensuring that issues are resolved.
• In coordination with DCA, developing and updating of data entry procedures and resources to support the data entry process.
• Managing project data in Subversion repository.
• Spot-checking the work of the data entry staff and pinpointing any recurring issues.
• Tracking of progress and status of data entry and proofreading using project management tools, and measuring progress against stated benchmark goals.
• Providing assistance to Philip Lampi in organizing and processing the Phase 3 material including arrangement, selection, and annotation.
• Develop, in coordination with DCA, an appropriate workflow for integrating the Phase 3 data into the election records created in Phases 1 and 2 of the project.
• Creation of metadata for election records including descriptive, administrative, and relationship metadata.
• Coordinating with DCA staff to ensure regular delivery of project data for ingest into the Tufts Digital Library.
• Working with DCA staff to resolve data and technology issues promptly as they arise.
• Communication of project progress and issues to project director.
• Entering and proofing election records when not completing other tasks.
Requirements:
MLS from an ALA-accredited program or relevant experience; expertise in XML and related tools; experience with concurrent versioning systems administration and troubleshooting (Subversion preferred); comfort running command line processes; experience using project management tools (JIRA preferred). Ability to manage multiple detail-oriented tasks simultaneously. Familiarity with American political and electoral history.
Compensation: This is a twenty-eight hour per week position, available immediately. Salary $25,000-$30,000 based on experience and qualifications. Benefits include health and life insurance; retirement plan options; paid holidays, vacation, personal and sick leave. A 28 hour work week within the library’s normal hours (M, T, Th, F 9-5; W 9-8) must be negotiated.
To apply: Submit a letter of application and a resume electronically to cmackey@mwa.org with the subject line “Search Committee, DAER Project Coordinator.” Please include contact information for three references. The American Antiquarian Society is an equal opportunity employer in accordance with applicable federal and state laws; minority candidates are encouraged to apply.