Associate Archivist

Description

 Davidson College, a nationally recognized liberal arts college, invites applications for the position of Associate Archivist.  As a new practitioner, and member of the Archives and Special Collections team, you will be mentored by professionally active senior team members with over 55 years of experience at Davidson as you help expand our digital projects and contribute to all facets of the department’s activities. Our library serves the information needs of a residential campus of 2,000 students. The College Archives and Special Collections include manuscripts, institutional records, college and local photographs, maps, oral histories and sound recordings, and rare books.  We also implement the college’s records program.   Members of the Archives and Special Collections team contribute to the college’s mission by supporting faculty and student research and enhance the curriculum with course-integrated instruction and project support.  The Archives actively participate in Davidson’s digital studies initiative and have implemented a number of digital collections projects independently and as part of collaborations with curricular initiatives. Representative projects and digital collections may be viewed at the Archives and Special Collections website.

The Associate Archivist, reporting to the Assistant Director for Discovery Systems and working under the additional guidance of the College Archivist, will participate in all aspects of the department’s efforts, primarily digital projects reference, collection processing, and outreach.

Duties include:

• Creating online content, working with faculty, staff and students to define and implement projects involving the analysis and presentation of information using digital techniques including Geospatial Information Systems (GIS/Mapping) and data visualization.  Supporting digital collection initiatives including the Institutional Repository, working with student organizations, and engaging in other outreach activities to solicit content and raise awareness of archives and special collections services.
• Providing reference services: assisting researchers in navigating the collections through use of online finding aids and other resource materials, retrieving materials for researchers, assisting researchers with appropriate equipment, and maintaining subject files.
• Participating in collection arrangement and description: processing and describing collections, applying basic conservation procedures, and contributing to the digitization of the unique resources of the Davidson College Archives and Special Collections in support of research and the curriculum.
• Enhancing and supporting the archives and special collections websites and social media activities.
• Supervising student workers and volunteers and participating in departmental and library planning activities.

Required Qualifications:

The candidate should demonstrate excellent communication skills, as the Associate Archivist (AA) will have frequent contact with campus community and outside researchers. The candidate will also need effective time management strategies. The AA must balance multiple duties while also serving as the project coordinator and quality control advisor for volunteers and student workers. Candidate must be conversant with or willing to learn collections management, archival standards, cataloging, digital projects, conservation, institutional repositories, and electronic records management. The successful candidate will be a creative and resourceful recent graduate of an ALA-accredited MLS or Masters of Archival Studies program, who is dedicated to undergraduate education and student/faculty research.

Desired Qualifications:

• Knowledge of metadata standards including Dublin Core, MODS, and MARC
• Understanding of HTML and XML
• Familiarity with one or more digital project software environments that may include Wordpress or Omeka
• Understanding of the Data Curation lifecycle
• Familiarity with data visualization or GIS techniques and software
• Willingness to work in a fast paced and ever changing environment and manage projects from start to conclusion