Research Assistant Contract

All MoEML student team members hired in Summer 2018 were given contracts based on the following template. We were asked to share our template with our Humanities colleagues. This contract has now been used by other Principal Investigators on SSHRC-funded projects based in HCMC.

Dates and Hours

Your initial appointment begins on [insert date] and concludes on [insert date]. In that period, we expect you to work [insert hours] per week. With prior consent from the Project Manager or the Project Director, and on condition that workstations are available in the HCMC, you may work up to half of those hours one week in advance or defer up to half of those hours to the following week.

Pay

Your rate of pay will be [insert rate] per hours, plus 4% vacation pay to be added by Payroll. The employee share of EI and CPP contributions will be deducted from your paycheque. To be paid, you must submit your hours to [insert designated person] no later than two working days before the submission date for the next pay period. For example, you must submit your hours for May 1-May 15 (Payperiod SM10) no later than May 26 (two working days before the deadline for Payperiod SM11).

Workplace

You will work in the collaborative and supportive environment of the Humanities Computing and Media Centre (HCMC), either on bookable workstations or on your own laptop at the large table. To book workstations and/or space at the table, contact [insert contact]. Liaise with the Project Manager about any additional restrictions (e.g., needing to work at the same time as a particular team member). You may not work in other locations without prior consent of the Project Director or Lead Programmer.

Your rights

MoEML is committed to following the Collaborators’ Bill of Rights and the Student Collaborators’ Bill of Rights. I will work with you to ensure that your contributions to MoEML are acknowledged in ways that work for you as well as the project. We enter into this contract on the understanding that you will likely identify areas of the project of particular interest to you, and that MoEML will be flexible in accommodating your need for further training and your desire to reframe your responsibilities as your skills develop. MoEML’s success is built on the contributions of many commited team members, and I fully anticipate that you will change MoEML for the better with the skills and ideas you bring to the project.

Your Obligations

  1. Attend team meetings when called to do so.
  2. Answer emails promptly (within 24 hours during the week).
  3. Report via enail to the Project Manager and to the Office Administrator if you are not able to work at your scheduled time.
  4. Report on your progress to the whole team at meetings.
  5. Report to the PI, SSHRC Co-Applicant, Project Manager, and/or Programmer when asked to do so.
  6. Check out the MoEML files from SVN when you set up your workstation for the first time.
  7. Update your copy of the repository at the beginning of every work session.
  8. Commit your changes to SVN regularly throughout your work session and at the end of your work session.
  9. Save all your MoEML work (including but not limited to research notes, planning documents, and encoding notes) to the relevant folders in SVN so that they are accessible to everyone.
  10. Keep records of your research in your working_files folder.
  11. Record your hours and activities regularly and accurately in the spreadsheet provided by MoEML in your working_files folder.
  12. Keep MoEML passwords and user ids confidential.
  13. Seek help early and often.1
  14. Bring forward suggestions and observations that might improve MoEML and/or team practices.
  15. Teach other team members when they need the skills and knowledge that you have acquired.

MoEML’s Obligations to You

MoEML is a SSHRC-funded project, which means that the Principal Investigator (MoEML’s Director) has two obligations: (1) to ensure that the work is completed within the timeline of the grant; and (2) to offer learning opportunities to students.

Learning Outcomes

You will learn how to
  1. Use literary bibliographies, historical and archaeological databases, digital archives, and other online repositories of primary and secondary materials related to EM London.
  2. Write short encyclopedia-style articles integrating primary and secondary historical and literary sources.
  3. Understand how early books were constructed and how early bookmaking techniques determine modern citation.
  4. Follow transcription, encoding, and editorial guidelines to prepare the base texts of scholarly editions.
  5. Write textual notes and annotations.
  6. Use and develop project-specific citation styles for bibliographies and in-text citations.
  7. Write reader-centered prose for the digital environment.
  8. Edit and copyedit your own and other people’s prose.
  9. Have a good working knowledge of the principles of text encoding and specific knowledge of TEI elements and attributes to be able to encode documents, using templates.
  10. Identify @xml:ids for streets, sites, and people.
  11. Find GIS coordinates using standard and custom mapping tools.
  12. Capture metadata accurately, precisely, and consistently.

Notes

  1. A question unasked is an opportunity lost. (JJ)

Cite this page

MLA citation

Jenstad, Janelle. Research Assistant Contract. The Map of Early Modern London, Edition 6.6, edited by Janelle Jenstad, U of Victoria, 30 Jun. 2021, mapoflondon.uvic.ca/edition/6.6/student_contract.htm.

Chicago citation

Jenstad, Janelle. Research Assistant Contract. The Map of Early Modern London, Edition 6.6. Ed. Janelle Jenstad. Victoria: University of Victoria. Accessed June 30, 2021. mapoflondon.uvic.ca/edition/6.6/student_contract.htm.

APA citation

Jenstad, J. 2021. Research Assistant Contract. In J. Jenstad (Ed), The Map of Early Modern London (Edition 6.6). Victoria: University of Victoria. Retrieved from https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/editions/6.6/student_contract.htm.

RIS file (for RefMan, RefWorks, EndNote etc.)

Provider: University of Victoria
Database: The Map of Early Modern London
Content: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

TY  - ELEC
A1  - Jenstad, Janelle
ED  - Jenstad, Janelle
T1  - Research Assistant Contract
T2  - The Map of Early Modern London
ET  - 6.6
PY  - 2021
DA  - 2021/06/30
CY  - Victoria
PB  - University of Victoria
LA  - English
UR  - https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/edition/6.6/student_contract.htm
UR  - https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/edition/6.6/xml/standalone/student_contract.xml
ER  - 

TEI citation

<bibl type="mla"><author><name ref="#JENS1"><surname>Jenstad</surname>, <forename>Janelle</forename></name></author>. <title level="a">Research Assistant Contract</title>. <title level="m">The Map of Early Modern London</title>, Edition <edition>6.6</edition>, edited by <editor><name ref="#JENS1"><forename>Janelle</forename> <surname>Jenstad</surname></name></editor>, <publisher>U of Victoria</publisher>, <date when="2021-06-30">30 Jun. 2021</date>, <ref target="https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/edition/6.6/student_contract.htm">mapoflondon.uvic.ca/edition/6.6/student_contract.htm</ref>.</bibl>

Personography