Director, Metadata and Digital Strategies

Description

Hamilton College seeks a dynamic, innovative, and forward-thinking leader to join the strategic leadership team of an integrated information services organization.  This is a perfect professional opportunity for someone who enjoys collaborating with others to help guide Hamilton’s digital future while maintaining its excellence in traditional media.  We are looking for an individual with a demonstrated ability to build strong and lasting relationships with members of the academic community. The director provides leadership for cataloging, metadata creation, library information systems, digitization, data curation and preservation and is a major partner in our support for digital scholarship.  The director will help keep Library and Information Technology Services (LITS) future-focused in a rapidly changing information resources environment and represent Hamilton in local, regional and national settings. The director reports to the VP for Libraries and Information Technology.

Hamilton and LITS are innovators in supporting teaching, learning and faculty/ student scholarship.   With grant funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, LITS staff are actively engaged in an internationally recognized effort to support digital scholarship through the Digital Humanities Initiative (http://www.dhinitiative.org/).

In 2014, Hamilton and Colgate joined edXto experiment with online learning, promote the public scholarship of our faculty, and enhance our intellectual connection with alumni.  The following year, together with Davidson and Wellesley, the four liberal arts colleges formed Liberal Arts Online: A Digital Teaching and Learning Collaborative to share our experiences and work together to better understand the potential impact of online and blended learning for our residential institutions.

In LITS, we have a broad program of employing students in substantive support roles, both to deliver excellent services, and to develop information and technology skills that they can apply throughout their careers.  Our research tutor program provides opportunity for students to provide research support to their peers under the guidance of our research librarians.  Similar programs exist to provide technology support to faculty and students.
Hamilton is a member of important national and regional consortia including the Oberlin Group (http://www.oberlingroup.org/), ConnectNY (http://connectny.org/), the Consortium of Liberal Arts Colleges (www.liberalarts.org) and the Council on Library and Information Resources (http://clir.org) and has a commitment to the ongoing professional development of its employees.

Hamilton College is a residential liberal arts college and a national leader in teaching students to write effectively, learn from each other and think for themselves. Excellent faculty, highly capable and motivated students, and a student faculty ratio of 9:1, provide an educational experience that emphasizes academic excellence and the development of students as human beings, to prepare them to make choices and accept the responsibilities of citizenship in a democratic world of intellect and diversity. The College values and seeks intellectual and cultural diversity and encourages respect for differences. Hamilton's 1,350-acre campus is situated on a hilltop overlooking the picturesque village of Clinton, N.Y. and is only one hour from the Adirondack Park to the northeast. Hamilton’s commitment to diversity is embodied in its need-blind admission policy and meeting the full demonstrated financial need of every accepted student for his or her entire undergraduate program.

SPECIFIC RESPONSIBILITIES

Director, Metadata and Digital Strategies

The director provides leadership for cataloging, metadata creation, library information systems, digitization, data curation and preservation.  The director collaborates with others in LITS to support faculty and student scholarship, digitization and access to special collections and the oversight of institutional repositories and is a member of the strategic leadership team that develops a shared vision for LITS that supports Hamilton’s institutional mission.

Specific responsibilities include:

• Provides leadership and advocacy for, and management of, cataloging and metadata creation, data curation and preservation.
• Partners with the following to support scholarship and digitization of special collections and coordination of scholarly communication efforts:
• co-directors of Hamilton’s Digital Humanities Initiative in facilitating faculty and student scholarship that utilize innovative digital tools;
• director/ curator of special collections and archives to make scholarly and historical materials accessible through digital means;
• research and digital initiatives librarian to oversee management of resource discovery, repository services, and scholarly communication initiatives.
• Develops policies and procedures for efficiently managing digital assets from digitization and metadata creation through ingestion into Hamilton’s Islandora/Fedora digital repository and other systems that are used to disseminate and preserve Hamilton’s intellectual scholarly assets and develops long-term preservations strategies and procedures.
• Supervises, evaluates, and provide high level backup for the Director of Library Information Systems, the Assistant Director for Metadata and Cataloging and the Digital Imagery Specialist.
• Works closely with faculty and LITS members to align these services with the academic program.
• Works with college administration and committees to develop policies and procedures for retention and preservation of institutional digital and physical assets.
• Represents Hamilton in local, regional and national organizations.
• Member of the LITS strategic leadership team.

Management/Leadership Skills

• Strategic and empathetic forward-thinker who works effectively across organizations and with diverse constituencies.
• Highly collaborative leader, who exhibits flexibility and adaptability and encourages innovation and experimentation.
• Critical, analytical, and innovative thinking skills, to successfully manage projects, prioritize work, and identify and solve problems.
• Excellent organizational and project management skills.
• Excellent oral and written communication and interpersonal skills.

Preferred Background

• Advanced degree (A Master of Library Science degree from an ALA-accredited institution or an appropriate graduate degree in a relevant field)
• Demonstrated ability in supervising, developing, and coaching information professionals.
• Knowledge and understanding of automated library systems and services issues.
• Familiarity with best practices in digital asset management, discovery and preservation.
• Practical experience with, and knowledge of, relevant scripting languages and frameworks such as PHP, Perl, Ruby on Rails, Drupal, Fedora Commons/Islandora.
• Experience with original cataloging and knowledge of metadata and bibliographic schema (e.g., Dublin Core, METS, MODS, MARC, BIBFRAME)