MATRIX: The Center for the Humane Arts, Letters, and Social Sciences is seeking an experienced, creative, and talented individual to fill the position of Assistant Director.

The Assistant Director will be primarily responsible for directly overseeing MATRIX’s project infrastructure. This includes managing MATRIX’s development team (programmers, web designers, graduate assistants, and interns) as well as project development and management (including creation of deadlines for all project deliverables, project and task tracking, and reporting). In addition, the successful candidate will lead the continued development of KORA (kora.matrix.msu.edu). The successful candidate will be expected to work both independently and with MATRIX senior leadership to develop projects, identify and pursue sources of extramural funding, and publish work in appropriate venues.

The successful candidate must have significant experience with web programming, including scripting languages (JavaScript, PHP, Ruby) and with some knowledge of compiled languages (Java, C++). Ability to work in a Unix/Linux based server environment is required, and preference will be given to candidates with database, XML, and web services expertise. Strong demonstrated organizational and project management skills as well as excellent communication abilities are mandatory. A background in digital humanities, informatics, information science, computer science, library science, or cultural heritage (especially archaeology, history, classics, or museum studies) is especially desirable. Bachelor’s degree required; MA, MLS, MIS, or Ph.D. preferred.

The Assistant Director is a full-time, 12-month professional staff position at the University. Salary is commensurate with experience. The University also offers a competitive benefits package. Candidates should submit application materials through jobs.msu.edu (Job No. 5746). Review of candidates will begin immediately, and position will remain open until filled. For more information, candidates are encouraged to contact Ethan Watrall via email at watrall@msu.edu

Founded in 1996, MATRIX: The Center for the Humane Arts, Letters, and Social Sciences Online is a globally renowned research center focusing on digital scholarship, the digital humanities, and cultural heritage informatics. MATRIX enjoys productive collaborations with numerous campus units, including the MSU Library, University Archives and Special Collections, the MSU Museum, The Department of Anthropology, the Department of History, African Studies Center, The WIDE Center, and The Department of Computer Science and Engineering. Beyond MSU, MATRIX has extremely strong ties with world class museums, archives, libraries, and cultural heritage institutions both nationally and internationally.

Michigan State University actively subscribes to a policy of equal employment opportunity and will not discriminate against any employee or applicant because of race, age, gender, color, sexual orientation, physical or mental disability, religion, national origin, or political affiliation. Women and minorities are strongly encouraged to apply.

The print version of Archaeology 2.0: New Approaches to Communication and Collaboration was released this week by the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press. Edited by Eric Kansa (Lead Developer of Open Context), and Sarah Witcher-Kansa (Executive Director of Alexandria Archive Institute), and Ethan Watrall (MATRIX Associate Director & Assistant Professor of Anthropology)the volume is the first book in the Cotsen Institute’s new Digital Archaeology Series. The book can be purchased from the David Brown Book Company. An open acces version of the book is also available at the University of California’s eScholarship repository.

The volume’s description reads:

How is the Web transforming the professional practice of archaeology? And as archaeologists accustomed to dealing with “deep time,” how can we best understand the possibilities and limitations of the Web in meeting the specialized needs of professionals in this field? These are among the many questions posed and addressed in Archaeology 2.0: New Approaches to Communication and Collaboration, edited by Eric Kansa, Sarah Whitcher Kansa, and Ethan Watrall. With contributions from a range of experts in archaeology and technology, this volume is organized around four key topics that illuminate how the revolution in communications technology reverberates across the discipline: approaches to information retrieval and information access; practical and theoretical concerns inherent in design choices for archaeology’s computing infrastructure; collaboration through the development of new technologies that connect field-based researchers and specialists within an international archaeological community; and scholarly communications issues, with an emphasis on concerns over sustainability and preservation imperatives. This book not only describes practices that attempt to mitigate some of the problems associated with the Web, such as information overload and disinformation, it also presents compelling case studies of actual digital projects—many of which are rich in structured data and multimedia content or focused on generating content from the field “in real time,” and all of which demonstrate how the Web can and is being used to transform archaeological communications into forms that are more open, inclusive, and participatory. Above all, this volume aims to share these experiences to provide useful guidance for other researchers interested in applying technology to archaeology.

MATRIX is seeking a student editorial assistant/clerk with excellent communication skills and a working knowledge of the WordPress content management system. Experience with audio editing is also desirable though not required. The position will be working on Gradhacker, a project that aims to use the web as a platform to collaboratively ‘hack’ graduate programs across institutions and disciplines. The position will also serve as a front desk clerk for MATRIX. Gradhacker.org produces posts sharing their advice and experience on a variety of topics including professional development, productivity, research, teaching, software, and wellness. Gradhacker.org will also launch a podcast and will produce three episodes each semester.

The position is for twenty hours a week at MATRIX and will divide its time equally between the two duties. For Gradhacker.org the position will edit posts, communicate with authors, manage the WordPress site, and edit the podcast. The position will also assist in using social and print media to advertise and promote Gradhacker.org. As a front desk clerk, the position will be responsible for tasks including: filing, data entry, answering phones, transcription, cleaning, and errands. The position will last the duration of the academic year. Internship credit is optional and available through WRAC.

It is critical that candidates possess initiative and enthusiasm for the Gradhaker project as well as the ability to communicate clearly and effectively. This position requires punctuality and attention to detail. Work hours will fall between 8am and 5pm on weekdays. Interested applicants should send a resume, cover letter (one page maximum), and short writing sample to Ethan Watrall (MATRIX Associate Director) at watrall@msu.edu. This position will be filled as soon as a strong applicant is found.

MATRIX is very happy to announce that GradHacker (www.gradhacker.org) will be appearing on Inside Higher Ed.  Edited by MSU grad students Alex Galarza (PhD Candidate in the Department of History and Cultural Heritage Informatics Graduate Fellow) and Katy Meyers (PhD student in te Department of Anthropology and past Cultural Heritage Informatics Graduate Fellow), GradHacker is a collaborative blog for grad students, by grad students. Their contributing authors hail from a variety of universities and disciplines. The posts aim to share experiences, identify problems and solutions, and inspire discussion about our fields and academia. They take the term ‘hacking’ beyond technology, analyzing the process of graduate school to better navigate its challenges and reach our goals. GradHacker topics are as varied as the individuals who write about them; they include parenting, pedagogy, health advice, using social media, and proposing a digital dissertation to your committee.

GradHacker began life as an idea generated by the Cultural Heritage Informatics Initiative Graduate Fellows, and has been incubated by MATRIX for the past year.  MATRIX is proud to continue its support of this innovative grad student undertaking, and look forward to new and engaging work as they move into this new phase of the project.

Matrix and the University of Kentucky Libraries’ Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History were recently awarded a National Leadership Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) for ongoing development of the Oral History Metadata Synchronizer (OHMS). The OHMS is a web-based system that provides word-level search capability, allowing users to search more easily for specific terms within recorded interviews, and time-correlated transcript or index to know exactly at what times in the interview these terms occur.

The project team, which also includes partner libraries at Baylor University, Oklahoma State University, and Cleveland State University, will further develop the OHMS into an open-source software tool that will be more compatible and interoperable with a variety of digital library and content management systems. The project team will also produce multimedia tutorials on the use, installation, and deployment of the OHMS tool. This tool will enable a wide variety of libraries and archives to enrich the use of digital oral history collections, inexpensively and efficiently enhancing access to and discovery of oral history online.

Matrix is happy to announce the publication of “Preserving the H-Net Email Lists: A Case Study in Trusted Digital Repository Assessment” by former Matrix archivist Lisa M. Schmidt, currently the Electronic Records Archivist for Michigan State University Archives and Historical Collections. This publication is the result of a two-year project to assess and improve the preservation of the academic email lists of the H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online consortium using the Trustworthy Repositories Audit and Certification (TRAC): Criteria and Checklist. In 2007, the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) awarded a grant to MATRIX to assess the H-Net email list archives as a trusted digital repository. Matrix hosts the H-Net consortium on its servers. The H-Net email lists provide a record of more than twenty years of academic discourse on humanities and social science research likely to be useful to future scholars and thus worthy of preservation.

According to Schmidt, “The study of the H-Net email list system as a preservation environment marked the first formal application of the TRAC to email list archives and demonstrated the successful audit of a repository functioning as a live access system. Those who manage LISTSERV-based and other email lists containing scholarly discourse, such as JISCMail, and even list managers for lists that document less formal dialogue, such as the Society of American Archivists’ Archives and Archivists (A&A) discussion list, may find the results of this study useful in creating and improving the preservation practices for their list archives.”

“Preserving the H-Net Email Lists: A Case Study in Trusted Digital Repository Assessment” appears in the spring/summer 2011 issue of The American Archivist (74:1) and is available online from The Society of American Archivists.

Matrix is pleased to report the recent presentation of “Podcasting the Past: Africa Past and Present and (South) African History in the Digital Age” by Peter Alegi, Michigan State University historian and co-host of the Matrix produced podcast Africa Past and Present. This presentation was part of the 23^rd biennial meeting of the Southern African Historical Society, which took place from June 27-29, 2011, at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban.

 Reflecting on several years’ experience hosting Africa Past and Present, “Podcasting the Past” explores the role of podcasting in the production and dissemination of historical knowledge about Africa and South Africa in a global context.  Drawing on a variety of primary and secondary sources, the paper examines technical aspects, issues of audience and access across the digital divide, podcasting as a new form of scholarly publishing, and the impact of podcasting on teaching about Africa. Africa Past and Present represents an unusual example of changing trends in the academic disciplines of history and area studies in the digital age; shows feature interviews with eminent scholars and persons, commentary on current events, and issues and debates of relevance to Africans at home and abroad, all seeking to broaden the availability and accessibility of cutting-edge knowledge relating to African experiences. The paper concludes that podcasting can be a powerful technological tool with which to democratize knowledge, enrich classroom learning, and propel the “increasing incorporation of ‘Africa’ and ‘Africans’ within the new streams of academic and even popular discourse.” 

 Africa Past and Present is co-hosted by Michigan State University historians Peter Alegi and Peter Limb and produced by Matrix. An online digital archive of all shows, as well as links to multimedia resources and collections of relevance to African experiences can be found at http://afripod.aodl.org/.

MATRIX is very happy to announce the publication of Archaeology 2.0: New Tools for Communication and Collaboration.  Co-edited by Eric C. Kansa, Sarah Whitcher Kansa, and Ethan Watrall (MATRIX Associate Director and Department of Anthropology Anthropology Assistant Professor), the volume explores how the web is transforming archaeology and is the first in the new Cotsen Digital Archaeology series published by UCLA Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press.

The volume’s description reads:

How is the Web transforming the professional practice of archaeology? And as archaeologists accustomed to dealing with “deep time,” how can we best understand the possibilities and limitations of the Web in meeting the specialized needs of professionals in this field? These are among the many questions posed and addressed in Archaeology 2.0: New Approaches to Communication and Collaboration, edited by Eric Kansa, Sarah Whitcher Kansa, and Ethan Watrall. With contributions from a range of experts in archaeology and technology, this volume is organized around four key topics that illuminate how the revolution in communications technology reverberates across the discipline: approaches to information retrieval and information access; practical and theoretical concerns inherent in design choices for archaeology’s computing infrastructure; collaboration through the development of new technologies that connect field-based researchers and specialists within an international archaeological community; and scholarly communications issues, with an emphasis on concerns over sustainability and preservation imperatives. This book not only describes practices that attempt to mitigate some of the problems associated with the Web, such as information overload and disinformation, it also presents compelling case studies of actual digital projects—many of which are rich in structured data and multimedia content or focused on generating content from the field “in real time,” and all of which demonstrate how the Web can and is being used to transform archaeological communications into forms that are more open, inclusive, and participatory. Above all, this volume aims to share these experiences to provide useful guidance for other researchers interested in applying technology to archaeology.

The digital edition of the volume is especially important because it is open access (hosted by the  University of California eScholarship service) and being made available freely to the scholarly community and the public under a Creative Commons BY-SA (By Attribution, Share Alike) license.

The volume’s c0-editors went so far as to a prepare a unique copyright statement in order to provide both context and rationale for why the open access edition of the volume under this specific CC license:

This volume carries a Creative Commons BY-SA (By Attribution, Share Alike, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) license. In short, this means that others can freely distribute, remix, and build upon the contents of this volume, provided two very important conditions are met: the original author receives proper attribution (especially citation) and all subsequent works carry the same license. We chose a Creative Commons license primarily because of our deep concerns in the sustainability of sharply escalating costs in scholarly publishing. These costs make it increasingly difficult for educational institutions, our col- leagues in commercial archaeology, students, and members of the interested public to (legally) obtain peer-review publications. Please note that the Creative Commons BY-SA license allows for commercial use, as well as free distribution both inside and out- side of the Academy. Permissions for commercial reuse does not, however, mean commercial appropriation. The “copyleft” philosophy embodied by this license enables this work to move in many contexts, but any adaptation or enhancement of this work must be shared back, openly, with the community. Finally, because this license requires proper attribution in any subsequent duplication or adaptation, we hope this volume helps build exposure and recognition for our contributions, and that our colleagues follow in this example. With enough accessible and open data (“data” that includes content like this book), we open up more opportunities for text-mining, tagging, aggregating, linking, visualizing, and hopefully better understanding. 

The print edition of the volume will be available for purchase from UCLA Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press.

MATRIX: The Center for the Arts, Letters, and Social Sciences is currently seeking an experienced and talented student user experience designer to start immediately.  The successful candidate will work on a wide variety of digital projects for deployment on the the web and mobile platforms.

Required

• Excellent demonstrated experience with modern principles of visual design, user interface design, and layout.
• Excellent demonstrated experience with standards-based HTML and CSS
• Experience with PHP and MySQL
• Experience with Javascript, including JS frameworks and techniques such as AJAX, JQuery, and/or Mootools.
• Experience designing and developing WordPress templates
• Ability to work well collaboratively or independently
• Ability to take initiative and meet deadlines.

Beneficial, but not required

• Mobile design and development experience (iOS or Android)
• Experience with HTML 5 and CSS3
• Knowledge of source code/version control software
• Experience with WordPress plugin development

To apply, please send your resume, cover letter, and online portfolio link via email to Ethan Watrall (watrall@msu.edu).  The position will remain open until filled.

How do you preserve information of continuing value and make it available for anyone who might want to use it? Those are the challenges faced by archivists, and teaching students the craft and science of archiving is a tricky business. It has become even more challenging with trillions of digital objects – both born digital and digitized – needing persistence.

Professor Steve Cohen, who works at MATRIX and specializes in learning design and assessment, has been collaborating with Professors David A. Wallace and Beth Yakel at the University of Michigan School of Information to integrate digital archiving tools into their graduate courses. The project, PAVEL (Preservation and Access Virtual Education Laboratory) is funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) for two years. Recently Professors Cohen and Yakel presented results from the first year of the project at AERI (Archival Education Research Institute). To date UM students have found learning and using the tools an insightful experience. They report gaining insight into the complexity of the digital world that will be home to archived digital objects, and feel that knowing the tools will help them once they once they complete their Master’s degrees. Ultimately the PAVEL will produce a curricular models and an assessment strategy ,  for archiving programs around the world to follow when integrating these tools into their courses.