1 May 2008
Expressions of interest sought
The Australasian Legal Information Institute (AustLII - http://www.austlii.edu.au/) is seeking expressions of interest for new positions to be created for 2008 as a result of Australian Research Council Linkage and LIEF grants and AusAID grants. We encourage people who are suitably qualified and interested in the proposed positions described below to send in their expressions of interest. Applicants may send in an expression of interest for more than one position.
The proposed positions will be located primarily at AustLII's offices in Building 10 at the City Campus of the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS). AustLII is a joint facility of the Faculties of Law at UTS and the University of New South Wales (UNSW). AustLII staff are employed as employees of UTS. The proposed positions will generally be offered as full time positions but opportunities will be available to accommodate the completion of tertiary studies or, in appropriate cases, on a part-time basis.
Expressions of interest are welcome at any time. Information concerning the formal application process will be announced when available.Background on AustLII
AustLII is the world's largest provider of free access to legal
information, and an international leader in the development of free
access throughout the world. It is also a leading research centre
in legal information systems.
AustLII provides over 260 databases of Australian legal materials for free access. AustLII also operates the Asian Legal Information Institute (AsianLII), the Commonwealth Legal Information Institute (CommonLII) and the World Legal Information Institute (WorldLII). In combination with other members of the Free Access to Law Movement, they provide access to over 870 databases from 123 countries and territories.
APA(I) PhD Scholarship
A PhD scholarship (APA(I) Award) $26,140 tax-free pa for three years is available.
This is funded from the ARC Linkage grant 2008-10 entitled 'Improving online case law within the constraints of free access through heuristic linking and resulting discovery mechanisms'. The focus of this research is on the difficult problems involved in the citation of the decisions of international courts and tribunals, and generalising the project's research findings to cover as many overseas courts and tribunals as possible. In addition to the ARC stipend, it may be possible to arrange an internship for suitably qualified applicants.
Qualifications: Applicants must be an Australian citizen or permanent resident or a New Zealand citizen; hold a relevant degree in computer science or IT and/or law preferably with first class honours, or with other indications of capacity to work at equivalent level, such as at least second class honours and/or significant research experience in industry; and not have completed a PhD or its equivalent.
Project Officers
These proposed positions will work with other members of the database team and are involved in processing primary materials (case law, legislation and treaties) and secondary materials (eg law journals and law reform reports) to produce databases on AustLII and related systems.
The main responsibility of Project Officers will be to prepare and process data using standard conversion tools. AustLII receives data feeds in a variety of formats from hundreds of data providers in Australia and internationally. Responsibilites of the proposed position also include running existing processing scripts to convert 'standardised' data for online publication as well as customising them for different data formats. Some editorial work may need to be performed especially in processing secondary materials and in relation to scanning back issues of printed law journals and law reports. Some contact with AustLII's data providers may be required.
These proposed positions will focus on one or more of the following areas:
- development and maintenance of case law databases on AustLII and related LIIs;
- digitisation and backcapturing of printed materials including law journals, as well as extracting related metadata;
- development and maintenance of international databases for inclusion on AsianLII, CommonLII and WorldLII; and/or
- development and maintenance of subject-based libraries including the Australian IP Law Library (AustLII) and the Privacy Law Library (WorldLII).
Qualifications (indicative): Tertiary qualifications in Computer
Science (or equivalent degree) and those who are
near to completion of qualifications; background in law; sound knowledge of, and experience in the use of HTML and internet protocols; knowledge of Unix, Perl, and any text management tools; good communications skills.
Senior Researcher (Legal Scholarship Library)
This proposed position is funded by the ARC LIEF Grant awarded for the project The Australian Legal Scholarship Library - enhancing research infrastructure for Australian law, which involves: (i) expanding the range of law journals included in the existing Law Journals Library; (ii) expanding the historical coverage of journals held; (iii) assisting other Law Schools in developing 'Law Research Series' databases; (iv) extending journal citation tracking facilities; and (v) examining possible options for creating an electronic publishing platform for Australian law journals.
The Senior Researcher will work with other members of the AustLII team and will take a leading role in ensuring the successful completion of the project. The Senior Researcher will need to liase with the investigators from various Universities involved in the project, and with the data providers contributing to this project.
Qualifications (indicative): Tertiary qualifications in Computer Science (or equivalent degree); tertiary qualifications in law; sound knowledge of internet and related protocols; sound knowledge of, and demonstrated experience in the use of Unix, HTML, XML, C and Perl; knowledge of and experience in the development of large scale publishing systems on the Internet; good communication skills (both verbal and written); knowledge of other text processing languages and tools.