Digital Preservation Librarian

Description

The University of Toronto Library invites applications for a Digital Preservation Librarian. This individual works as a member of the Scholars Portal Team, reporting to the Director of Scholars Portal. Scholars Portal, a department of the University of Toronto Library, is the digital service arm of the Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL), managing infrastructure and services that support Ontario’s 21 university libraries. The Scholars Portal team of 24 librarians, developers, and systems staff support services in four broad areas: research and member services; data and geospatial services; digital collections; and digital preservation services.

Scholars Portal collects, aggregates, and preserves the shared collections of OCUL member libraries. These include over 40 million scholarly articles, 675,000 ebooks, and thousands of numeric and geospatial datasets. The Digital Preservation Librarian is responsible for developing policies and procedures, tools and services to ensure that these collections are managed in such a way as to ensure long-term preservation and access. External audit of Scholars Portal services and data management practices ensures that internal curation practices meet accepted international standards.

The Digital Preservation Librarian is responsible for working with Scholars Portal staff and the broader OCUL community to ensure that assessment standards as established by relevant preservation communities (e.g. TRAC, DSA, etc…) are understood, communicated, and employed on an ongoing basis to ensure that Scholars Portal practices meet or exceed community standards.

Maintaining Scholars Portal’s status as a Trustworthy Digital Repository (TDR) is an important strategic goal for OCUL, and working with OCUL to ensure that outcome is a key responsibility of the position, with the next audit scheduled for Spring/Summer of 2015.

Supporting digital preservation initiatives at OCUL member institutions is another key element of the position. Responsibilities in this area range from developing educational and training materials (e.g. webinars on best practices) to implementing repository tools and services. Over the coming year, the Digital Preservation Librarian will play a key role in the design of a new preservation service for OCUL member libraries called Permafrost, a hosted preservation service based on Dataverse/Islandora, Archivematica, and OpenStack Swift. Permafrost will support preservation of the wide range of digital resources managed by OCUL libraries, including web archives, government publications, and born digital primary sources.

The incumbent will:

• Work with other librarians, programmers, and systems staff at Scholars Portal and OCUL member libraries to ensure that all data ingest and management procedures conform to appropriate preservation standards and practices
• Work with the OCUL community to establish and support working groups as required to address preservation-related issues
• Ensure that preservation practices are documented and maintains that documentation for review by external auditors and the broader library community
• Review and make recommendations to the Scholars Portal Director and OCUL libraries on the use of archival management tools and services
• Provide training, advice and support for OCUL member libraries in pursuing local digital preservation initiatives
• Work with national and international preservation initiatives (e.g. Keepers’ Registry) to ensure Scholars Portal is integrated with broader preservation initiatives
• Participate in the design, implementation and management of new hosted preservation support services for OCUL member libraries
• Coordinate external audits of Scholars Portal practices and policies with respect to digital preservation
• Review local load agreements to ensure sufficient archival rights are captured and represented in the agreements

Qualifications:
Required Qualifications:

• ALA-accredited Master of Library or Information Science degree (or equivalent)
• At least one year’s relevant professional experience in an academic setting
• Proven ability to apply best practices for digital preservation, including various assessment tools such as TRAC
• Understanding of the application of the OAIS reference model for digital preservation
• Excellent oral and written communication, interpersonal, problem-solving, presentation and teamwork skills
• Proven ability to manage meetings (in person and remotely)
• Strong organizational and time management skills

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with Archivematica or other archival management tools
• Experience with repository tools such as Fedora, Islandora, Dataverse, D-Space
• Experience working with developers in defining and communicating functional requirements for new applications