We're Looking for a new Use Case Tester

T-PEN is looking to expand its development team to include a new post-doc position in the final year of development. See the ad below:

Saint Louis University, a Jesuit Catholic institution dedicated to education, research, healthcare and service, seeks applications for a full-time, limited contract, Research Fellow (Senior Research Assistant) in the Center for Digital Theology. The successful candidate will join a research team which is developing a web-based application in digital humanities: T-PEN (Transcription for Paleographical and Editorial Notation) is a web-based tool that assist scholars who wish to transcribe from digitized, unpublished manuscripts. T-PEN has been in development for a year, and the new Research Fellow will contribute to its completion over the next year. Details of the project may be found at digital-editor.blogspot.com

Reporting to the Principal Investigator, the Research Fellow works alongside a Java Developer and GUI Developer as well as the project's other Co-PI, Professor Abigail Firey (University of Kentucky). The Research Fellow contributes to T-PEN's general development (which features to create or modify, how to make the application more usable, etc.), participates in bug reporting and usability testing, attends weekly staff meetings, and executes a transcription project that will act as a major use case for T-PEN. That project will be based on one or more the 2,600 manuscripts that T-PEN currently has permission to use, which are drawn from five partnering digital repositories (Parker on the Web, e-codices, CEEC, Hougthon Library [Harvard] and Assisi). The Research Fellow will publish a working digital edition of the text based on the transcription work using T-PEN throughout the academic year. The Research Fellow also contributes posts to T-PEN’s blog and must be willing to "tweet" about the project on a regular basis on Twitter.

The successful candidate will possess a doctorate in medieval studies (or a single humanities discipline with a medieval research focus) and will have strong, demonstrated skills in paleography and Latin and/or a medieval vernacular language. Some experience in text editing would also be an asset. The successful candidate must have demonstrable experience in the digital humanities (such as digital text editing, software development, digital image analysis, database development, etc.). Experience with XML encoding would also be an asset. (S)he must also possess strong interpersonal skills, be able to work in a team environment, and be able to work to set deadlines. The position will begin immediately upon hire and will terminate on 30 April 2012. The annual salary will be $40,000, paid on a monthly basis. The position includes medical and other minor benefits.

Summary of Qualifications

Required
- PhD in Medieval Studies (or a single humanities discipline with a medieval research focus)
- Demonstrated skill in Paleography and Latin (and/or a medieval vernacular language)
- Demonstrable experience in digital humanities
- Strong interpersonal skills and the ability to work in a team environment
- Able to work to set deadlines
Desirable
- Experience in text editing
- Experience with XML encoding

Applications are to be submitted on line at http://jobs.slu.edu. Please include a letter of application, a CV, a list of URLs of previous projects or a sample written piece that engages the methods of digital humanities, and a list of three referees. Potential applicants are welcome to contact Professor James Ginther, Director, Center for Digital Theology, for any additional information at ginthej@slu.edu.
Saint Louis University is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer and strongly encourages applications from women and minority candidates.

T-PEN User Testing at Dartmouth College (August 18-19, 2011)

T-PEN's PI (Jim Ginther) and Senior Developer (Jon Deering) spent two full days participating in a digital tools workshop at Dartmouth College, sponsored by Stanford's DMSTech project.  As Stanford develops a new framework for digital repositories, they are also supporting three major research clusters of scholars.  These scholars focus on the manuscripts of the Parker Library (Corpus Christi College, Cambridge).  Naturally, these research clusters were in need of digital tools as they worked with Parker's digital collection.  The two tools selected were the new annotation tool, Digital Mappaemundi (DM) and, yes, T-PEN.

Over the two days, Ginther and Deering (along with DM's team, Martin Foys and Shannon Bradshaw) introduced fourteen users from North America and Europe to the functionality of the two tools.  These scholars received individual instruction and got to play with the tools for their own work.

For T-PEN, this was the first real-world "test drive" of our work and it yielded some excellent feedback.  We were able to observe some new user expectations when it came to work flow on a project, as well how users expected the tool to function for each main feature.  Since T-PEN is still at a pre-beta release, these testers broke T-PEN a number of times (which is what you hope for when testing); but more importantly they provided clear and helpful feedback on what they wanted T-PEN to do for them. They were all a very gracious and patient group of scholars.

The workshop was organized by Stephen Nichols,The James M Beall Professor of Medieval French at John Hopkins University.  As a former faculty member of Dartmouth, he ensured we were treated very well and had all the necessary resources at hand.  The workshop ended with an outstanding dinner at Steve's summer home in Vermont, where we dined on exquisite food with the mountains in the backdrop.

These new users will continue to use T-PEN over the next year and will become a significant source for usability testing and feature development. The T-PEN team is honored to be working with such careful scholars, and we know the partnership will only make T-PEN better.

(A few more photos are available on Picasaweb)