Data Specialist for the Queens Memory Monuments Project
The Queens Memory Project is an ongoing community archiving program of Queens Public Library and Queens College, CUNY. Thanks to a generous grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Queens Memory has embarked upon a year-long Monuments project running through March 2023. The project includes identifying publicly available datasets of places in Queens named after individuals (including streets, schools, statues, and parks) and researching and visualizing biographical and demographic data of those people. The project also includes analyzing the demographics of the neighborhoods of Queens to identify gaps in representation between named places and the people who live in these communities.
The team will present the gathered information on a project page created by Urban Archive that features a map of these named places in Queens. The project will engage members of the public and bring new knowledge into the QPL local history collections.
Under the direction of the Director of the Queens Memory Project, The Data Specialist will work closely with Urban Archive staff, QPL’s Senior Manager of Organizational Assessment, the Project Archivist, QPL’s Metadata Services and Marketing departments to capture, aggregate, filter and disseminate data in this project.
Responsibilities:
• Coordinate with civic tech partners including Urban Archives and QPL staff, offices of elected officials, and municipal repositories to access public datasets and records such as proclamations created for naming ceremonies in Queens
• Assemble dataset of individuals whose personal names have been used to name public places in Queens including parks, streets, schools and other public spaces. This involves identifying, mining, and organizing relevant data from existing datasets.
• Generate demographic comparisons between the individuals represented in named places and the people who live in Queens today. (Utilizing data from the U.S. Census and NYC Open Data)
• Assist the Urban Archive team in creating accurate map locations for named places.
• Coordinate with the Project Archivist, Urban Archives, and QPL staff to develop workflow and systems for data sets and assets developed by this project that will enable public sharing and archival preservation of the assets and metadata generated by the project.
• Contribute to the development team at Urban Archive to enhance discoverability of named places on their platform and to filter the project’s named places dataset by geographic boundaries of NY City Council Districts, QPL branch libraries, and Link NYC kiosks to enable curation and public programming.
• Work with Queens Memory Director and Queens Public Library (QPL) Senior Manager of Organizational Assessment to develop a set of demographic data points about the neighborhoods of public space designations (street, park, etc.) with named individuals, as well as historical data points about the individuals whose names are used in public spaces. Develop visualizations for this data.
• Develop evaluation plan for project and oversee data collection for project’s impact assessment and reporting to funder
Qualifications:
• Prior experience with data wrangling, cleaning, analysis, and visualization
• Working knowledge of the open data landscape as it pertains to civic space, history and the built environment
• Experience with spatial data
• Experience with U.S. Census data, NYC Open Data, and other demographic information
• Experience with Tableau, Air Table, Urban Archive, and ArcGIS, preferred
• Experience with creating visualizations and stories from data required
• Ability to work independently
• Ability to produce work on deadline
• Collaborative nature and the ability to take constructive editorial feedback when applicable
Compensation: $17,500 to be paid upon completion of deliverables
Deliverables:
May 2022: (1) Complete dataset of individuals whose personal names have been used to name public places in Queens, (2) a workflow and systems for the data collected and generated during the project, (3) an evaluation plan with tools for collecting data for final reporting.
July 2022: Demographic data for individuals identified in Queens’ named places, organized into NY City Council districts, QPL branch locations, and NYC Link kiosks (2) demographic data of city council districts’ populations, and (3) data visualizations of these data sets.
February 2023: (1) Visualizations and demographic data connected to crowd-sourced contributions, and (2) delivery of project outcomes data prescribed by the evaluation plan that will be needed for final project reporting
To apply: Please send a cover letter, resume and links or files of work samples to queensmemory@queenslibrary.org. Please include DATA SPECIALIST in the subject line of your email.
This posting closes April 22nd and our team hopes to begin interviews the week of April 18th.
