Cobuild Ltd is seeking to recruit a Computer Officer for a 12 month
initial period to start as soon as possible.
Cobuild is part of the Dictionaries Division of HarperCollins
Publishers (UK) and is a collaborative venture between HarperCollins
and the University of Birmingham. Cobuild carries out research into
modern English language based on the collection of computer-held
corpora and compiles and publishes dictionaries and other reference
books stemming from this research. The current central "Bank of
English" corpus is 211 million words of text. It is accessed by
lexicographers and researchers who compile and edit dictionary
material on-line.
Cobuild's computing is currently focussed on Sun Microsystems SPARC
servers with user access via Sun workstations and Textronix
X-terminals. We make use of a WAN link to the Internet via EUnet-GB
and are connected to the University High-Speed Campus Network. SunOS
and AIX flavours of Unix are critical to our language analysis work.
Additionally we run desktop PCs and Apple Macs for clerical and
administrative tasks.
We seek a person with excellent Unix understanding, 'C' programming
ability, X-Windows/Emacs/Perl/DOS/Windows experience, an interest in
corpus-based natural language processing and some text processing
experience. In a publishing environment, good interpersonal skills
are valuable, as is the ability to work effectively within a team.
The post is for 12 months initially. We plan to make this post
permanent at the end of this period, but this will depend on the
successful development of several new Cobuild projects. The salary is
negotiable and will be commensurate with the experience and
qualifications of the post-holder and with salaries in the wider UK
publishing industry. The post will be based at Cobuild's offices in
the Institute of Research & Development, Birmingham Research Park,
Vincent Drive, Birmingham B15 2SQ. Cobuild staff benefit from the
superb research resources and leisure facilities of the University of
Birmingham and our offices are located on the University campus in
Edgbaston.
A summary job description is included below.
If you are interested in applying, please send a CV in plain text
format by e-mail (preferably), fax or post to Jeremy Clear, Systems
Development Director. Informal telephone or e-mail enquiries
concerning the post are welcome.
e-mail: jem@cobuild.collins.co.uk
tel: (+44) 121 414 3925
fax: (+44) 121 414 6203
post: Institute of Research & Development,
Birmingham Research Park,
Vincent Drive,
Birmingham
B15 2SQ.
See also our WWW pages at URL http://titania.cobuild.collins.co.uk/
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Job Title: COMPUTER OFFICER
Purpose of the Post
-------------------
To develop and support the computer systems at Cobuild for
corpus-based language reference publishing.
Main Duties
-----------
Write or modify programs for Unix to enhance the software available to
the Cobuild team for corpus access and analysis, computational
lexicography and the development of electronic products in the area of
English language reference. Use 'C', Perl, Tk/Tcl, Bourne shell,
Emacs-Lisp as appropriate for programming.
Provide computing support for the Bank of English corpus, working with
the Corpus Manager in the areas of data capture, conversion of data
formats, text mark-up, and administrative and record-keeping systems.
Contribute to the development of the on-line Internet services run by
Cobuild, including the WordWide Web site, the CobuildDirect service
and support for remote access for Cobuild staff and affiliates.
Share in the regular System Administration tasks for the Unix systems
within Cobuild and take a leading role in troubleshooting and
maintenance.
Install and maintain standard packages on PC/Windows and Apple Mac
platforms: e.g. wordprocessing, database, spreadsheet packages,
CD-ROM and multi-media products, etc.
Monitor the use of the system, to identify improvements that could be
made in hardware or software and make recommendations for new
software, new equipment or revised configuration where appropriate.
Maintain a knowledge of the networking (local-area and wide-area)
systems used within Cobuild (TCP/IP, 10Base-T and 10Base-2 Ethernet,
NFS and PCNFS, etc.) and assist with maintenance and troubleshooting.
Write and maintain documentation of Cobuild software.
Liaise with HarperCollins dictionary teams (Bilingual and English
Dictionaries) based in Glasgow through regular meetings, information
exchange and sharing of software expertise and other resources.