Want to work at Harvard University’s library? They’re hiring now…

The "oldest institution of higher learning in the United States" is advertising for a Wikipedian-in-Residence. It pays $16 an hour (which is just under £10 an hour at today’s exchange rate) and requires the successful candidate to be a “registered Wikipedian in good standing”.

Photo: Harvard Library by mbrand. Reproduced under a Creative Commons licence

The job is based at the Houghton Library where Harvard’s rare books and manuscripts are kept, including collections of papers from W.H. Auden, Henry James, James Joyce and Emily Dickinson (among many others). Whoever gets the job will be uploading public domain content to Wikipedia and “creating new pages on notable topics”.

You can read the full job advertisement here but it’s a temporary 13 week position, so you might have to get an extension on your dissertation if you’re successful.

And, if you’re interested in rare books and first editions, did you know that the Dyson Collection in our own Special Collections holds first editions of works by William Wordsworth and John Keats? Also, the Milner-White and Eliot Collection both contain volumes by some of the great 20th century writers; notably T. S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats, Robert Graves, D.H. Lawrence, and Seamus Heaney.

You can find out more on the highlights of our Special Collections here and we also have an A-Z collections guide.