Web Archiving Service Manager

Description

The Web Archiving Service Manager is responsible for driving the definition, rollout and ongoing support of Stanford University Libraries' (SUL) Web Archiving service. The Service Manager will work directly with Stanford librarians, faculty and researchers to run web harvesting tools in order to collect web content to be archived in the Stanford Digital Repository. The Service Manager will lead efforts to identify and assemble existing technologies, employ current methods, and then maintain and enhance the service over time, responding to the inevitable changes in the Web’s technology and likely increasing demand for capturing sites in support of the University’s needs for research, teaching, library collection building, as well as regulatory compliance.

Reporting to the Manager for Digital Library Services, the successful candidate will be responsible for raising awareness and increasing usage of the web archive service; identifying and working with new partners; developing relationships with existing stakeholders; creating opportunities for collaboration; brokering agreements; and representing Stanford in national and international web archiving and digital preservation communities.

This is a four year fixed term position with the possibility of an extension.

Specific Duties:

Service Strategies and Design (20%)
Responsible for establishing and maintaining the strategic plan to introduce this service to Stanford University and then to maintain and enhance the service over time, responding to the inevitable changes in the technological, academic and financial drivers for web archiving. This strategic plan includes defining service components for crawling, validating, preserving, mining, indexing and providing access to archived sites; identifying tools and methods suitable for SUL; managing and prioritizing the backlog of enhancements; and pursuing collaborations with others that complement Stanford’s resources and offerings. Responsibilities also include helping craft and follow a rights and policy framework for web capture; communicating the service roadmap to stakeholders, and developing and tracking a service cost model to enable rational management of the service’s costs & benefits.

Service Rollout (15%)
Responsible for ensuring that the appropriate service support framework is in place, including customer support channels, documentation, policies and procedures. Work closely with a cross-functional service delivery team (librarians, software engineers, system administrators) in order to ensure on-time, in-scope delivery to patrons. Document how to’s, help and service description pages for stakeholders; codify operating levels in service level agreements; manage initial and subsequent service version launches, working in coordination with engineering resources.

Service Operation 50%
Work directly with Stanford librarians, curators, faculty and authorized researchers in order to identify and collect web content for preservation. Create and oversee web nomination form and process; oversee rights management and permissions tracking system; troubleshoot and run interference during crawls to ensure crawls are performed on time and complete successfully; conduct quality assurance (QA) on collected content to ensure complete and usable crawls; and manage accounts and quota for internal users of the system. Provide periodic reports on crawl statistics, and evaluate and assess metrics in order to determine program effectiveness and client service impact, including measuring and track service performance metrics

Communication & Outreach (15%)
Develop marketing materials designed to promote the service to users through a variety of artifacts, including service pages, blogs, screencasts, standard presentations, etc. Identify and work with new partners, develop relationships with existing stakeholders, create opportunities for collaboration. Engage with the international web archiving community to represent Stanford in this area, and identify opportunities for joint development and/or curation work. Visit stakeholders and users in order to assess needs and priorities and to gather, collate, and present customer feedback/voice of the customer

QUALIFICATIONS:

Minimum Qualifications
• Masters degree or equivalent in a related field.
• 2-3 years related experience in a research library, archive or an information technology organization.
• Demonstrated knowledge of web archiving tools, techniques, issues and trends
• Demonstrated project management skills, usually associated with two or more years of managing IT product or service releases.
• Demonstrated ability to drive collaborative efforts across organizations to successful implementation of project goals.
• Demonstrated exceptional customer relationship skills and consensus building skills, including the ability to establish effective working relationships in a diverse environment and across organizational units.
• Excellent oral and written communication skills with a demonstrated ability to produce public facing materials such as service pages, presentations, blogs, etc.
• Demonstrated success working in a fast-paced, innovative environment.

Preferred Qualifications
• 1-2 years experience working in a web archiving program and/or in research library collection development
• Expert knowledge of web archiving tools and techniques
• Demonstrated ability to use a variety of scripting tools
• Demonstrated understanding of web technologies and web automation frameworks and the implications of these technologies on web archiving processes.
• Demonstrated experience with technical tools, including but not limited to XML, XSLT, WARC/ARC, Ruby on Rails, Java and Python