Stanford Digital Repository Operations Manager

Description

The Stanford Digital Repository (SDR) Operations Manager is responsible for ensuring operational excellence across the processes, policies and technologies necessary to ensure successful and trusted management and preservation of digital content over time. Stanford University Libraries' (SUL) SDR manages hundreds of terabytes of assets, and is extending services to include data stewardship of all formats of scholarly information, deposited and reused by an increasing array of depositors both within and beyond Stanford University. As the SDR services and content base expand dramatically, the SDR Operations Manager will play a pivotal role in codifying SDR operations as a trustworthy digital repository, operating at scale, that meets the needs of the University for a secure, sustainable store of authentic, digital information.

Reporting to the Manager for Digital Library Services, the successful candidate will work with a cross-functional team of other digital library service managers, software engineers, system administrators and knowledge experts in the campus community to help SDR realize its mission. The Operations Manager will also be responsible for raising awareness and increasing usage of SDR preservation services, identifying and working with new partners, developing relationships with existing stakeholders, and creating opportunities for collaboration.

This is a four-year, fixed-term position with possibility for extension.


Specific Duties:

Service Operation 50%
Ensure operational excellence across the processes, policies and technologies necessary to ensure successful and trusted preservation of digital content. Identify, lead development of processes that support current and future SDR operational goals. Develop technical and process documentation, either by creating that documentation or by overseeing creation of materials. Identify and catalyze development of tools and procedures that ensure operational stability and system security across automated processes. Oversee ingest processes and queues, ensuring that collection content and related metadata meet repository requirements. Define and implement workflows for bulk ingest operations, working with external stakeholders to accession their materials en masse. Oversee exception handling, working with engineers and data administrators to ensure appropriate and timely remediation of data and processing issues. Define, evaluate and assess operational and performance metrics in order to track adherence to service levels; track and manage capacity. Plan and oversee migration of content and functionality from version to version of SDR services; ensure data remediation efforts are coordinated across version. Drive SDR’s adherence to Trustworthy Digital Repositories (TDR) best practices across all aspects of SDR services, including determining prioritized areas of focus, documentation of practice, and audits (internal and external, as appropriate) of practice and SDR security.

Service Support (20%)
Define and manage the service support framework, including customer support, documentation, policies and processes and workflows. Manage content owner administrative activities, including coordinating adherence to Service Level Agreements and customer-specific requirements for access, support or functionality. Work with content owners, technical project managers and other constituents to ensure SDR Agreement packages and all related licensing, rights and use permissions are gathered, tracked and followed. Define and generate both standard and ad hoc reports in support of content depositors and stakeholders’ service requirements. Define and create appropriate documentation and help resources for various user constituents, including service level agreements, FAQs, etc.

Service Strategies and Design (10%)
Participate in establishing and maintaining the strategic vision for the repository service in order to maintain and enhance this service over time, responding to the inevitable changes in technology. Participate in managing and prioritizing the service backlog of maintenance and enhancement requirements. Capture service enhancement requests through a variety of communication models including interviews with key constituents, enhancement and bug tickets. Contribute to developing a service cost model that will serve as the basis for budgeting and tracking ongoing service maintenance costs as well as definition of service chargeback models, where appropriate. Analyze evolving preservation policies, processes and technology trends for adoption and implementation

Marketing & Communication (20%)
Serve as the principal editor for the digital library’s web content. Develop service marketing materials designed to promote DLSS services, technology and strategies to stakeholders in the University and beyond, in both the academic and digital library communities. Produce and oversee the production of relevant, targeted and effective content 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. 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 relevant field
• 3 or more years related experience in an research library, archive or an information technology organization with an emphasis on rigorous, production workflows
• Demonstrated familiarity with repository concepts, tools and techniques.
• Demonstrated knowledge of metadata concepts and standards, in particular technical metadata and preservation metadata.
• Demonstrated project management skills, usually associated with two or more years of managing IT product or service releases.
• Demonstrated ability to successfully define and implement new processes and procedures.
• Demonstrated ability to drive collaborative efforts across organizations to successful implementation of project goals.
• Demonstrated exceptional customer relationship skills, 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 documentation, service pages, presentations, blogs, screencasts, etc.
• Demonstrated experience working in a fast-paced, innovative environment.

Preferred Qualifications
• 1-2 years demonstrated experience supporting a digital repository or managing digital collections projects.
• In-depth knowledge of technical and preservation metadata
• In-depth knowledge of storage, replication, auditing and version management.
• Demonstrated experience with technical tools, including but not limited to XML, XSLT and Ruby.