Digital Access and Preservation Librarian

Description

Overview

The Center for Jewish History is a collaborative home to five Partner institutions: the American Jewish Historical Society, American Sephardi Federation, Leo Baeck Institute, Yeshiva University Museum and YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. The Center for Jewish History and Partner collections span five thousand years, with tens of millions of archival documents, more than 500,000 volumes, in addition to thousands of artworks, textiles, ritual objects, recordings, films, and photographs. When the Center opened its doors twenty years ago, it made a commitment to preserve the collections housed within its walls and make them accessible to scholars, students, and diverse audiences by realizing a unique, shared services model across all five partners.

From 2018-2020, the Center implemented a new digital asset management and preservation system, Ex Libris’ Rosetta, to replace the Center’s previous system Digitool. As part of the implementation, over 50 terabytes of digital assets were migrated to Rosetta.  The Center seeks a systems-focused librarian tasked with the maintenance of the shared system and the ongoing improvement of the digital assets found within the system.  

The Librarian will report to the Senior Manager for Metadata and Discovery. The successful candidate will work closely with department members in Metadata and Discovery Services, the Center’s Information Technology Department, vendors, and stakeholders in the Center and Partner community to ensure that assets and their corresponding description will be preserved in perpetuity. The position is full-time and exempt.

Main Duties

• Oversee a robust, proprietary digital asset management and preservation system to ensure the Center and Partner institutions can continue to build a diverse array of digital holdings that is free to the public and available online across the globe.  
• Together with colleagues in Metadata and Discovery Services, expand functionality and facilitate interoperability between our digital asset management system, the Center’s other shared library systems, and external data-sharing exchanges.
• Serve as primary contact with Ex Libris and external contacts related to the maintenance of the digital asset management and preservation system.  
• Work collaboratively with Center and Partner staff to analyze, remediate, and troubleshoot new and migrated digital assets.
• Maintain an in-house developed processor tool, written in Python, that assists Center and Partner staff to create and submit deposits into the system as part of an automated and mediated workflow.
• Collaborate with Center and Partner colleagues on expanding existing digital preservation policy and planning, especially as policies are facilitated or enforced via our digital asset management system.
• Participate in the Rosetta user community and larger digital preservation community, including monitoring the developments and professional best practices in digital asset management, digital preservation, and related topics.

Education and experience

• ALA-accredited graduate degree or accredited graduate degree in another appropriate discipline, such as computer science, digital preservation and curation, or archival science with a specialization in digital archives. 
• Comfort and proficiency in performing work within and outside of a digital asset or content management system to improve, audit, and optimize assets for public and staff use. 
• Experience working and thinking in Extensible Mark-up Language (XML) and programming languages like Python to assist with maintenance of in-house developed processor.
• Proven capacity to foster and facilitate the work of others in using library systems or platform.
• Familiarity with current standards used in libraries, archives, and museums for description and preservation, including Dublin Core, MAchine-Readable Cataloging (MARC), Resource Description and Access (RDA), and Encoded Archival Description (EAD).

Requisite skills
Essential  

• Ability to devise own objectives, meet independent goals and deadlines, and see a variety of projects through to completion.
• Commitment to working in and fostering a collaborative environment with diverse stakeholders of varying levels of expertise in the preservation and description of digital assets.
• Effective communication skills with the capability to translate from technical to ordinary language; where necessary, maintain, expand, or create workflow documentation to train others and reflect best practices.
• Knowledge of and aptitude for articulating best practices in using library/content/asset systems and preserving digital assets in a library, archival, or museum setting.

Preferred    

• Ease using and administering digital asset management systems, preservation systems, integrated library systems and/or database management systems, especially Ex Libris products like Aleph or Rosetta.
• Understanding of library systems structure and environments, including interoperability between systems and how systems communicate via protocols, particularly OAI-PMH.
• Experience working with databases and utilities such as Oracle and SQL*Plus, or database management systems like MySQL.

Company Benefits
•    15-21 Federal and religious holidays off each year in addition to generous vacation, sick and personal days.
•    Full health benefits (medical, dental and vision) with minimal employee contributions.
•    Free Life Insurance and Long-Term Disability coverage.
•    Flexible Spending Account and Commuter Benefits.
•    Generous 403b retirement benefits. 

The Center for Jewish History is committed to diversity and inclusion. Qualified individuals who bring diverse perspectives to the workplace are especially encouraged to apply.