Digital Archivist

Description

The Johns Hopkins University Archives seeks a dynamic and forward-thinking individual to oversee its electronic records management operations. Reporting to the University Archivist, the Digital Archivist leads the continuing development of the Archives' maturing digital archives program, establishing and implementing policies and procedures for the management of born-digital materials including university records and manuscript collections of the Sheridan Libraries Special Collections department that are informed by pragmatic application of professional standards. The application period will remain open until filled, but priority will be given to applications received before September 20.

Essential Job Responsibilities:

Digital archives responsibilities (80%)

• Directly supervise student staff and indirectly supervise professional and project staff in activities related to digital archives management
• Create, document and manage workflows for acquiring, describing, processing, preserving and providing access to born-digital materials that accord with best practices and integrate with current departmental procedures for print collections
• Manage the Special Collections department's web archiving program, including creating and monitoring web crawls, performing quality control checks and supervising others in quality control checks, and creating descriptive metadata for web content that accords with professional standards
• Create disk images of born-digital materials received on physical media
• Work with library and university IT staff to facilitate the transfer of born-digital materials to library-controlled storage using hard drives, FTP, shared drives, and other methods
• Analyze born-digital content for the presence of personally identifiable information and other confidential and sensitive information; redact and otherwise restrict access to this information; and train staff to perform these activities
• Collaborate with the University Archivist to develop procedures for arranging and describing born-digital materials according to professional standards, implement these procedures, and train staff on these procedures
• Collaborate with the University Archivist to conceptualize and implement a method for providing access to born-digital materials
• Provide guidance to curators and donors on the preservation and transfer of born-digital manuscript materials
• Collaborate with the Digital Infrastructure team to develop a repository for preserving and managing born-digital materials
• Assist University Archivist in project development for grants and other fundraising activities related to born-digital materials
• Manage grants awarded to the Archives unit that relate to born-digital materials
• Serve as the Libraries' representative on the Trusted Digital Repository committee of Academic Preservation Trust (APTrust)

Collections management responsibilities (20%)

• Communicate with campus offices to transfer university records of enduring value in both analog and digital form to the Archives' custody
• Create accession records for university records in both analog and digital form transferred to the Archives' custody
• Assist University Archivist in establishing records retention guidelines for university records in both analog and digital form
• Participate in creating policy, best practices, and professional standards for processing and descriptive work
• Participate in the creation and maintenance of documentation and policies for arrangement and description
• Assist University Archivist in setting collection development strategy for university records in both analog and digital form
• Participate in general planning and policy development in the support of Archives unit's strategic directions

Qualifications

• At least two years' experience required, a minimum of three years preferred, in an archives or special collections department in a research library or similar setting.
• MLIS from an ALA-accredited institution, with a concentration in Archives, or equivalent combination of education and experience. Special Knowledge and Skills:
• Knowledge of strategies developed or adopted by the archival community for managing born-digital archival material.
• Experience with tools and software used to capture, manage, and deliver born-digital records such forensic hardware, FTK, BitCurator, BagIt, and DataAccessioner
• Experience with web archiving activities and tools such as Archive-it and George Washington University's Social Feed Manager
• Experience creating disk images from legacy media such as hard drives, floppy disks and ZipDrives
• A high degree of technical facility, experience working in command line interfaces, and the demonstrated ability to learn new technical skills through research and self-study
• Experience supervising and/or mentoring other employees
• Experience accessioning or processing archival and manuscript materials, either analog or born-digital
• Knowledge of relevant standards for archival description and preservation including DACS, EAD, EAC-CPF, and PREMIS, and familiarity with other metadata standards
• Familiarity with MPLP and Accessioning-As-Processing methodologies
• Experience managing multiple projects at once
• Strong decision-making, project management and supervisory skills
• Excellent communication skills and ability to work both independently and as part of a team
• A strong user focus and public service orientation, excellent analytical, interpersonal and communication skills, and an ability to embrace change
• When applying, please attach a resume, cover letter, and three references, preferably combined as one document.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with XSLT, Xpath, Xquery and one or more general scripting languages such as Python, Bash or Perl
• Experience with archival collections management tools such as Archivists Toolkit and ArchivesSpace
• Experience implementing MPLP-influenced or Accessioning-As-Processing workflows