Digital Library Center Blog | UF

The Florida Center for Library Automation is looking for a bright, energetic, technophile to work in the Digital Library Services group. The University of Florida Libraries, which includes UF’s Digital Library Center (us), works with the Florida Center for Library Automation. FCLA coordinates library technology for all of the State Universy Libraries. For those not from Florida, our universities are all of the publics with the word “University” in them, but the universities aren’t tied as one institution (like the University of California at…) so FCLA works with all of us (FGCU, FIU, FSU, UNF, FAMU, USF, FAU, UCF, UWF, NCF, UF). While we (we as in UF) don’t get to see the folks at FCLA nearly enough, we do get to see and hear from them fairly often and they’re great.

FCLA is in Gainesville, but not next to the UF campus (where we, the DLC are), so there are no traffic and no parking woes for FCLA, and they can have events like “Take Your Dog to Work Day“. The official job description is online here and more official details are below. The parts of FCLA that I find most exciting are the Florida Digital Archive (cutting edge awesomeness!); collaborating across so many institutions and with so many great people; working with FCLA; being in Gainesville; and working with UF in particular, of course. FCLA is also a technical unit playing with an implementing technology and so they get to play with, test, and implement really wonderful tools while working with all sorts of great people across the state.

FCLA is a center of the State University System of Florida which provides automation services to the libraries of eleven public universities.  Working at FCLA combines the challenges of library and information science with large scale data processing in a fully networked, web-based environment. Application areas they work in involve:

• training and user support of library staff
• e-resource licensing
• metadata
• structured and full-text search and retrieval
• XML technologies
• web services
• relational database management systems
• next-generation integrated library systems
• digital image, audio, and multimedia

FCLA is located in Gainesville Florida, consistently rated one of the best places to live in the United States, and administratively associated with the University of Florida.  We offer a casual work environment, ample free parking, flexible hours, and full State of Florida benefits.

In the next few months, folks from the Digital Library Center will be traveling to meet with some of our partners, and to meet new friends. Our upcoming travel includes:

• May 8: Erich Kesse (director), Mark Sullivan (programmer), and Brooke Wooldridge (dLOC Coordinator, from Florida International University) are going to Washington, DC to meet with the World Digital Library based at the Library of Congress about the Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC)
• May 11-14: Erich, Brooke, and Mark are off to meet with the US Embassy in Haiti and the National Archives in Haiti about the Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC) and establishing a digitization center in Haiti
• May 14-18: Mark joins Brooke to travel to Guyana to meet with CARICOM
• May 24-31: Jane Pen (Metadata & Quality Control) is visiting Taiwan and will be meeting with the library at Tamkang University (淡江大學).
• June 26-July 2: Laurie Taylor (Digital Projects Librarian) will be going to the American Library Association Conference in Anaheim, California where she’s hoping to see the Disney Archives and to find a partner for the comics collection and the Barks’ materials

We’ll probably have other meetings and explorations in the near future, so let us know if you’ll be in the same area and would like to meet for coffee and great conversation about digital projects.