Job (Michigan): encoding early English texts

[Paul F. Schaffner]

I draw your attention to a text-encoding position that
has been posted here at UM/Ann Arbor. See this URL for
application info:

  http://www.umich.edu/~jobs/current/postings/T-00-07653-DB.html
   
Despite the vague and offputting title ("Comp Systems Specialist I")
we're looking mainly for someone with a humanities background,
especially in early English, capable of applying an analytical 
understanding of texts to the review of SGML-encoded Middle 
and Early Modern English books in a production environment. In 
the past, linguists, archivists, and historians have been among
those who found the work congenial, but we are open to candidates
with diverse education and experience.

The job is that of a production assistant, and is funded 
initially for one year, with the strong likelihood that the
person who takes the job will fairly rapidly be given increased
responsibilities and longer tenure.

The largest part of the job will be reviewing the tagging added 
to keyed texts by outside data-conversion firms: deciding whether 
they have correctly interpreted the text in calling (say) this 
prose and that verse; this a stanza and that a mere run-on line; 
this a note, that a heading, or that other thing a catch word; 
and so on, both in individual cases and, more importantly, in 
general. There will probably be some straight proof-reading, 
to keep the keyers honest; some supervision of student or contract
workers as they become available; and probably some mundane book 
preparation work (checking for completeness and legibility; 
ensuring consistent identification of the item; etc.).

The first part of the year will be devoted to producing electronic
versions of Middle English texts taken from public-domain editions.
There may also be some leftover / maintenance work on the Middle
English Dictionary. The latter half of the year will be devoted 
to the first actual text production under the "EEBO" project 
(Early English Books Online), which hopes to produce encoded text 
versions of as many as 25,000 of the titles listed in the 
Pollard & Redgrave and Wing short-title catalogues of early English 
printed books. Michigan is taking the lead on this undertaking, 
in collaboration with Oxford, and it seems likely to be a project 
with a high profile.

Facility with this kind of work is a must, as are basic computer
skills; some familiarity with the material (and the language) 
is preferred; experience with text markup (e.g. HTML, SGML) and/or 
text processing (e.g., regular-expression syntax, Perl), would 
certainly be helpful but are not essential. 

This is a middle-level non-librarian university library job with
excellent benefits, a decent chance for advancement, and (for
the uninitiated) a good opportunity to learn practical SGML
while working on important humanities resources in a
leading digital library program.

Paul
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Paul Schaffner | pfs at umich.edu | http://www-personal.umich.edu/~pfs/
Text-encoding Coordinator + Middle English Compendium Production Mgr
University of Michigan Digital Library Production Service
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