Metadata Librarian (Job Req ID: 93718)

Description

The Sheridan Libraries at Johns Hopkins University seeks to hire a full-time Metadata Librarian ( Librarian III) for a 3-year Mellon Foundation grant funded position to provide metadata services and solutions to the American Prison Writing Archive (APWA).

This position can be done fully-remotely, hybrid remote/in-person, or fully in-person in Baltimore. This position is organizationally located in the Technical Services department and has full Johns Hopkins University employee benefits.

The APWA is the first fully searchable digital archive of non-fiction essays and poetry by incarcerated people writing about their experience inside U.S. prisons and jails today. The APWA currently hosts 3,307 essays, from forty-eight states and over four hundred prison facilities. It is growing at approximately 70 essays each month. Originally created and maintained at Hamilton College in New York, the APWA is currently in midst of a move to Johns Hopkins University under the guidance of a team of Johns Hopkins University and Hamilton College faculty and library staff.

As a part of this move, this team is seeking to improve and revitalize the APWA’s website, workflows, and metadata for improved end-user experience and scholarly use. This will include migrating the APWA from Islandora 7, which is nearing its end-of-life, to a yet-to-be-selected new digital repository.

During their three-year term, this individual will take the lead on metadata strategies, design, and workflows for the APWA’s digital metadata. This will include reviewing the APWA’s current metadata standards, controlled vocabularies, and entity-relationship model and implementing changes to improve metadata creation, interoperability, browsability, and searchability in the archive.

In collaboration with the APWA team, the metadata specialist will also lead the remediation, cross-walking, and migration of metadata to a new digital repository. In addition, the metadata specialist will work closely with Sheridan Libraries’ Technical Services Department, especially the Digital Content Metadata Specialist, to integrate APWA metadata with the library’s local best practices. Lastly, the metadata specialist will take charge of creating detailed documentation of metadata-related decision-making, workflows, and guidelines for continued use after their term.

The ideal candidate for this position will be an excellent collaborator and thoughtful communicator, able to translate and explain complex metadata needs, challenges, and best practices to a diverse team of library workers, library application staff, and faculty. They also will be excited to research and learn new standards and new technologies on the job. Finally, the ideal candidate will have a strong and demonstrated commitment to social justice, equity, and inclusion, especially as it relates to carceral studies and metadata description.