As a member of the ACRL Diversity Alliance, UT Libraries is pleased to offer this three-year position with the Texas Digital Library (TDL) consortium for an early-career digital information professional, librarian, or archivist from a historically underrepresented, minoritized community. The resident will explore opportunities and contribute to digital libraries at a large, predominantly academic consortium with membership from public libraries, community colleges, and health science centers. They will have an opportunity to lead, create, collaborate, grow, belong, and discover varied aspects of creation, maintenance, and innovation in digital libraries and archives regionally, nationally, and internationally.
LINK TO JOB POSTING | Salary Range: $50,000 + depending on qualifications
To our future colleague | This residency is yours: your choices, your career direction, and your leadership, in partnership with Texas Digital Library’s unique community of digital library and archives workers offering experiences with an array of digital library activities, both technical and non-technical. While this is an entry-level position, your status from the beginning will be that of a colleague, and TDL will come together to support you as you grow as a digital libraries peer.
ROTATION OPPORTUNITIES
Scholarly Communication
- Digital repository administration and support, since TDL hosts many DSpace institutional repositories.
- Library publishing, since TDL hosts many Open Journal System instances.
- Open Educational Resources (OER) support, as TDL participates in a growing number of OER efforts in Texas and the region.
- Research data management, as TDL is the home of the Texas Data Repository, which is a shared, multi-institutional instance of Dataverse and a steering committee of liaison librarians from our member libraries.
- Geographical Information Systems work in partnership with TDL’s active GIS Interest Group.
- Types of positions likely to result from this work:
- Digital Repository Manager
- Research Data Services Coordinator
- Open Education Librarian
- Scholarly Communications Librarian
Digital Collections
- Metadata management, crosswalking, quality analysis and coordination, as all of TDL’s hosted systems and services require an understanding of metadata and rights standards and good practice.
- Engage with metadata equity efforts in the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) and among TDL’s hosted service groups.
- Web Archiving practice and coordination of effort, because TDL hosts the Web Archiving Texas Interest Group (WATXIG) and provides TDL members a discounted opportunity to use Archive-It from the Internet Archive.
- Online exhibits are an area in which TDL members have expressed an interest in expanded services from TDL. TDL would like to develop our DPLA portal of TDL-hosted collections which uses Blacklight and Spotlight, as well as explore other affordable and practical options for collaborative and institutional exhibits in the region. A resident might create, for example, an exhibit and/or guide that connects TDL and the Portal to Texas History content together.
- TDL is a leader in hosting community-based digital preservation storage options via DuraCloud-mediated Chronopolis and Amazon storage. With considerable digital preservation expertise on staff, TDL offers consultation towards good practice, engages with national and international digital preservation activities, and is committed to providing digital pathways from most of our hosted services.
- Types of positions likely to result from this work:
- Metadata Librarian
- Digital Archivist
- Digital Curator
- Digital Preservation Archivist
- Digital Stewardship Coordinator
Coordination, outreach, and community engagement
- Digitization efforts vary across TDL’s member organizations and Imaging User Group, so there are opportunities to coordinate efforts across the consortium.
- Work with a cohort of peers concurrently at other consortia institutions in the region, including UT Austin, for active support and a fostering of shared experiences
- Engage with graduate and undergraduate students to improve the pipeline from minoritized groups into cultural heritage professions.
- Provide an introduction to the field and its communities to students, faculty, users and new professionals. In alignment with TDL’s priorities, especially support students at HBCUs to find paths to library careers. Additionally, a resident may have an opportunity to manage student projects, capstones, and/or practicums focused on work related to TDL systems and services.
- Grants work which could include identifying, writing, applying, implementing, project management, and supporting TDL as a hub for collaborative grant-seeking efforts.
- Participate in the planning and production of TDL’s annual Texas Conference on Digital Libraries as well as other TBD events.
- Plan, host and facilitate informative, creative and inclusive webinar content related to TDL services and systems.
- Help the TDL membership and community identify obstacles that would keep a librarian from staying within the profession, as retention of new and minoritized professionals is a well-known challenge.
- Engage with TDL working groups, national and international groups like NDSA and DPLA, and communities like the Global Dataverse Community Consortium and Open Texas.
- Types of positions likely to result from this work:
- Communications manager
- Community manager
- Outreach Librarian
Technology
- Infrastructure
- Technology-focused: integrations, cross-walking, persistent identifiers, machine-learning
- Software development for digital libraries
- Accessibility (websites, contents, collections)
- Types of positions likely to result from this work:
- UX Librarian
- Software Developer
- Systems Librarian
- Digital Archivist
Service Management
- Assessment via usage and metrics analytics tools like Google Analytics and various other reporting features offered from most of TDL’s hosted systems and services.
- Provide help desk support via TDL’s online ticketing system in Zendesk.
- Digital library service-level support (i.e. functions of TDL service management & liaising, coordinating)
- Document systems, services and initiatives via TDL’s website, Confluence wiki, Jira platform, GitHub, and other platforms TBD.
- Provide training & instruction for TDL-hosted services and systems.
- Assist in the management of any of TDL’s hosted services.
- Identify, assess, and enable undeployed features useful to TDL members in TDL-hosted infrastructure and systems.
- Types of positions likely to result from this work:
- Librarian
A final menu of rotation options will be shared with the resident during orientation.
MORE ABOUT THE POSITION
A rotation plan for the first year will be collaboratively developed during orientation, heavily relying on the resident’s leadership, goals, and interests. In the second year, the resident may wish to focus on one select area, deepening their skills and developing specialized experience. In the third year, the resident should focus on career development and complete a culminating project. Over the course of the residency, TDL mentors and supervisors will play a significant role in supporting the resident’s experience.
The resident will enrich the TDL consortium by bringing in their own ideas and perspectives, leading projects end-to-end, contributing to collaborative and strategic initiatives, and supporting UT Libraries’ and TDL’s commitment to building a diverse workforce and fostering equity and inclusion in the profession. TDL will encourage participation in cohorts of ACRL Diversity Residents nationally and regionally.
The residency program will provide specialized training, continuing education, and mentorship tailored to the resident’s professional interests and goals. The wide range of digital library work experience available through this position will enable the resident to explore various career options, build essential skills, and receive professional mentorship and support for their career goals.
The resident will have the opportunity to guide their working experiences collaboratively with TDL staff and its members. In the first year, TDL’s intention is to deploy a model of a roughly 3-4 month rotation-based residency with longer placements in years 2 and 3; however, the rotation schedule is flexible based on the resident’s preference. An array of activities available to the resident at TDL are listed in the section above titled Rotation Opportunities.