Senior Innovation Specialist (Not-To-Exceed 3 years)

Description

Application Deadline: August 10, 2022

This Indefinite, Not-To-Exceed three (3) years position is 100% remote eligible for applicants from outside of the Washington, DC Metropolitan Area.

The position serves as the Reuse Technologist for Connecting Communities Digital Initiative (CCDI), which is located in the Digital Strategy Directorate (DSD) within the Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO) service unit of the Library of Congress. The position reports to the Program Director for CCDI, who provides administrative and policy direction concerning overall project priorities.

As a part of the Library’s Mellon Foundation-funded Of the People: Widening the Path program, CCDI focuses on how technologies can enable storytelling and connect more people to the Library’s expansive digital collections. CCDI offers grants to Artists/Scholars, Higher Education Institutions and Libraries, Archives, Museums. The Initiative began in 2020 and ends in 2024, with the possibility of a 4-year renewal.

The person selected for this position will work closely with CCDI, DSD and OCIO colleagues to support the development and use of technologies by and with grantees. In addition, the person will work with the program team to support grantees in developing strong, realistic, and impactful plans for their 1-year or 2-year projects.

As the lead technologist working with CCDI to support engagement with digital Library materials, this person will be responsible for ensuring that the technologies used and developed through the program support the program goals and improve discovery and use of digital Library materials (both digitized and born-digital) that connect to specific communities and audiences.

As a recognized technical expert, performs the design, development, and implementation of innovative uses of the digital collection, including reprocessing, visualizations, and recombination. Analyzes and plans for policy and technical challenges including collections security, IT security, and privacy policies and laws. Develops policies, guidelines, and best practices. Assures operational policies, and practices in the delivery of innovative uses of the digital collections.

Supports the transformation of data and collections information for program uses and documents the workflows and processing decisions/actions to support needs identified by stakeholders.

Serves as point of contact for technical questions from partner organizations as they undertake their projects— connecting them with appropriate technical tools and resources as needed.

Shares technical processes and progress through regular meetings, reports, and updates to the program team and assists with grant reporting. Shares lessons from CCDI with other federal government agencies through meetings, reports, presentations, and updates.

Expands the agency’s online research capabilities and use of its digital collections by broadening the use of current digital technologies and identifying emerging digital technologies and methods in librarianship, humanities, scholarship and research. The employee interprets and revises existing policy for use by others within or outside the organization on projects related to digital scholarship.

Identifies and recommends services to address changing practices in research. Through partnerships and outreach, facilitates the development of innovative tools and workspaces for individual, community and online-based research. Evaluates tools and technologies to identify their potential uses in digital humanities and scholarly research. Ensures analytics strategies are consistent with user privacy, open source and open data. Provides training, instruction or workshops as needed at the intersection of technology and library science.

Broadens the reach of the Library in connecting with institutions and organizations and communities of color by developing and implementing policies, practices, and sustaining networks of mutual support.

Applicants must have had progressively responsible experience and training sufficient in scope and quality to furnish them with an acceptable level of the following knowledge, skills, and abilities to perform the duties of the position without more than normal supervision.

Knowledge of digital technologies and methods in librarianship, humanities, scholarship or research.**

Ability to communicate technical information.**

Ability to effectively liaise and engage with target communities and audiences.**

Knowledge of data management, data science, and analysis.

Ability to communicate effectively other than in writing.