The Klezmer Archive Project is Hiring For Two Positions With the Project Team!
Is cutting edge technology AND music your jam?
We’re looking for folks with specialist expertise to help our project move forward. If this is you, or if you know someone who might be a good fit for these jobs, please feel free to pass on this post.
See below for full job descriptions. More about the Klezmer Archive Project here and here.
You can drop a line to info at klezmer institute dot com (or the form link below) for further queries about our budget and to get the conversation started.
UI Designer
The Klezmer Archive Project is seeking a Visual/UI Designer to design interfaces and develop a preliminary visual identity for the project. This is a contract position in phase II of an NEH-funded digital humanities project for documenting heritage culture and present day community-building around heritage culture. This work would take place over the next 12 months (8/2024-8/2025) on a part-time basis (up to 15 hours per week, ebbing and flowing with the stage of work and team communications). Pay is negotiable within the grant budget line for this position.
About the Project
The goal of the Klezmer Archive Project is to create a digital humanities tool that allows musicians, researchers, hobbyists, and everyone else to explore all available information about klezmer music and its network of contemporary and historical people. Right now, that information is spread out across multiple libraries and archives around the world, and primarily organized in the minds of a small number of experts. The Klezmer Archive project will be a hub for connecting resources in a way that’s accessible to everyone.
To bring our vision to life, we’re applying tools and approaches never before used in digital ethnography or musicology, including first-order logic knowledge graphs, new ways of modeling uncertain historical truth in context, and deep integration between data and multimedia.
The tool will incorporate cutting-edge user experience (UX) concepts such as generous interfaces, serendipitous discovery, and multi-faceted data visualization in the final product. The project will use pre-existing open-source tools with strong ecosystems (such as MEI and IIIF) and interoperate with existing collections and institutions.
We believe the Klezmer Archive tool will:
- Open new horizons in digital ethnomusicology by developing a cutting-edge model for documenting oral tradition with an open, freely available, highly curated heritage music corpus
- Enable new historical, ethnological, and linguistic research by putting a huge body of detailed information at researchers’ fingertips
- Inspire musicians, poets, and other artists by guiding users to resources that were previously hard to find and access
- Make it easy for newbies to klezmer music, Yiddish language, and other Ashkenazic expressive culture to engage with material presented in context and satisfy their hunger for knowledge
Our small, distributed, nonprofit team has expertise in software development, library science, musicology, Ashekanzic culture and history, UX research, ontology development, and most of us are also klezmer music practitioners as well.
What we’re looking for
To bring our project into reality, we need someone with design expertise to help us create a cohesive visual identity and design interactive interfaces initially for prototypes, and eventually for live applications.
A qualified candidate would have experience with:
- Branding, UX, interface, and visual design
- Designing for both highly interactive interfaces and content/information-driven experiences
- Working as a sole designer and communicating design decisions to people with a wide variety of backgrounds (especially people from outside the tech industry)
- Designing interfaces that are delightful to use for all users, including those with accessibility needs
- Working with and using findings from UX researchers to guide design decisions
An ideal candidate would also have experience with:
- Creating design systems to force-multiply limited design and developer time
- Designing data visualizations
- Designing for mixed RTL and LTR scripts (e.g. Yiddish, Hebrew)
- Working in non-corporate (nonprofit, volunteer) environments
- Knowledge of Ashkenazic Jewish culture and/or interest in learning its visual language to inspire designs
Are you also a front-end developer? We would love to integrate our designer and frontend dev roles into a single contract for the right person. See our front-end developer job description for more information.
Front End Developer
The Klezmer Archive Project is seeking a front-end developer to lay down a technological foundation for our project. This is a contract position in phase II of an NEH-funded digital humanities project for documenting heritage culture. This work would take place over the next 12 months (8/2024-8/2025) on a part-time basis (up to 15 hours per week, ebbing and flowing with the stage of work and team communications). Pay is negotiable within the grant budget line for this position.
About the Project
The goal of the Klezmer Archive Project is to create a digital humanities tool that allows musicians, researchers, hobbyists, and everyone else to explore all available information about klezmer music and its network of contemporary and historical people. Right now, that information is spread out across multiple libraries and archives around the world, and primarily organized in the minds of a small number of experts. The Klezmer Archive project will be a hub for connecting resources in a way that’s accessible to everyone.
To bring our vision to life, we’re applying tools and approaches never before used in digital ethnography or musicology, including first-order logic knowledge graphs, new ways of modeling uncertain historical truth in context, and deep integration between data and multimedia.
The tool will incorporate cutting-edge user experience (UX) concepts such as generous interfaces, serendipitous discovery, and multi-faceted data visualization in the final product. The project will use pre-existing open-source tools with strong ecosystems (such as MEI and IIIF) and interoperate with existing collections and institutions.
We believe the Klezmer Archive tool will:
- Open new horizons in digital ethnomusicology by developing a cutting-edge model for documenting oral tradition with an open, freely-available, highly curated heritage music corpus
- Enable new historical, ethnological, and linguistic research by putting a huge body of detailed information at researchers’ fingertips
- Inspire musicians, poets, and other artists by guiding users to resources that were previously hard to find and access
- Make it easy for newbies to klezmer music, Yiddish language, and other Ashkenazic expressive culture to engage with material presented in context and satisfy their hunger for knowledge
Our small, distributed, nonprofit team has expertise in software development, library science, musicology, Ashekanzic culture and history, UX research, ontology development, and most of us are also klezmer music practitioners as well. To bring our vision to life, we’re applying tools and approaches never before used in digital ethnography or musicology, including first-order logic knowledge graphs, new ways of modeling uncertain historical truth in context, and deep integration between data and multimedia.
What we’re looking for
To bring our project into reality, we need someone with front-end development expertise to help us implement designs for prototypes, and eventually for live applications. A qualified candidate would have experience with:
- Implementing designs both using Javascript frameworks and without
- Architecting highly-interactive interfaces and also interfaces that are more content-driven with islands of interactivity
- Building experiences that are delightful to use for all users, users including those with accessibility needs
- Working as a sole front-end dev and communicating decisions with people with a wide variety of backgrounds (especially people from outside the tech industry)
An ideal candidate would also have experience with
- Working in non-corporate (nonprofit, volunteer) environments
- Working with mixed RTL and LTR scripts (e.g. Yiddish, Hebrew)
- Implementing approaches to force-multiply limited dev and design time such as design systems
- An interest in Ashkenazic culture, klezmer music, and/or Yiddish language
Are you also a designer? We would love to integrate our designer and frontend dev roles into a single contract for the right person. See our designer job description for more information.
