Macalester College seeks College Archivist

Text courtesy of Katy Gabrio, Associate Library Director, DeWitt Wallace Library, Macalester College

Macalester College’s DeWitt Wallace Library seeks to hire a full-time College Archivist to provide leadership, advocacy, and vision for this important college asset. The ability to address inequities and challenges faced by historically underrepresented groups and the commitment to centering the Maclaester student experience is essential in this position.

The College Archivist is responsible for managing, planning, developing, organizing, and providing outreach and access for Macalester College’s manuscripts and college records. This individual establishes and implements all policies regarding the acquisition, accession, processing, retention, deaccession, preservation and use of these materials. The individual in this position supervises and conducts outreach, research, and instruction activities and works closely with our academic community to ensure that these collections most effectively and efficiently support college curricular needs and scholarly endeavors. This individual also advises College departments on appropriate schedules for retention and disposition of College records in all formats and leads campus-wide Records Management efforts. The individual in this position also works closely with a Research & Instruction Librarian on management, preservation, and digitization work related to the Rare Books, and other special collections. The College Archivist and Special Collections Librarian is a member of the Collection Development & Discovery team.

Responsibilities

• Supervises and leads day-to-day operations of Archives.
• Plans, develops, and implements policies for the development, management, and use of the College Archives and related collections. 
• Develops retention policies and works with responsible individuals in record-creating departments and offices of the College to provide for transfer of non-current records of permanent value to the archives.
• Manages publishing and preservation of student Honors Projects in DigitalCommons, our institutional repository.  
• Advises College departments on appropriate schedules for retention and disposition of College records in all formats and leads campus-wide Records Management efforts.
• Develops, arranges and describes archival collections in accordance with accepted standards and practices.
• Creates finding aids using contemporary tools in accordance with national standards and ensures the quality of finding aids created by other staff.
• Understands property rights, copyrights and other legal issues related to use of archival materials.
• Provides reference services and research assistance for researchers regarding the use of archival collections. 
• Promotes collections through exhibits (physical and digital), publications, presentations, instructional sessions, and other outreach activities.
• Works with the Development Office to secure grants and other external funding for projects.
• Conducts and collaborates on library instruction and educational assistance on the nature of archives to students. Identifies and expands upon opportunities to incorporate archival collections and resources into the curriculum.
• Interacts with donors both internal and external to the organization. Solicits collections and negotiates with prospective donors regarding papers that complement the archives; provides support for acquisitions of new collections. Documents and acknowledges gifts and donations.
• Plans and administers a preservation and conservation program for the diverse types of materials related to the history of the College and for Special Collections.  Provides for the preservation of materials in all formats – paper, audio, and visual film, photographs, slides, digital images, web pages, and computer files.
• Plans and implements technology related to management of archival collections, including creating digital resources (e.g. finding aids, online exhibits, etc.), developing and maintaining the archives web site, and presenting the College’s historical materials on the library’s web site and/or utilizes the Digital Commons or other web-based digital content systems.
• Works with a Research and Instruction Librarian to evaluate, select, organize, and ensure cataloging and access to facilitate the use of the Special Collections by researchers. 
• Selects collections for digitization and creates access points for discovery and promotion of digitized archival and special collections.
• Investigates and uses local and national resources and organizations available to help small college archives meet national standards for service and collection management.
• Hires, trains, mentors, and evaluates .5 FTE staff and approximately 5-6 student assistants.
• Maintains knowledge and expertise in the proper handling for rare books, manuscripts and other artifacts.
• Identifies new publications by faculty, staff, and alumni for additions to the Great Scots collection.
• Consistently performs work with attention to detail and in a timely and accurate manner meeting the needs of the library as well as community demands.

Required Qualifications

• Masters in Library and Information Science from a program accredited by the American Library Association (ALA) or from a program in a country with a formal accreditation process as identified by ALA.
• Demonstrated commitment to equity, inclusion, and diversity. Actively engaged in learning and practicing principles of social justice and inclusion to increase individual capacity to support institutional changes that create and sustain a more welcoming and inclusive environment across the Macalester Community.
• Demonstrated experience and knowledge of current archival methods, theories, practices, and proper handling of physical archival collections materials and including preservation of mixed collections.
• Experience with donor relations and developing community contacts.
• Excellent organizational, time and project management skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• 3+ years professional experience as an archivist processing and cataloging archival or manuscript collections; including at least one year of professional experience providing research, reference and instruction support in an academic or research environment and successfully managing and supervising the daily activities of a unit or department.
• Demonstrated proficiency with archival collection management systems (e.g. PastPerfect), including archival content, structure, and metadata standards such as EAD and DACS and in applying current descriptive and metadata standards. 
• Knowledge of digital archives, digital initiatives or institutional repositories, best practices and real-world applications, trends, and emerging technologies.
• Demonstrated ability to secure grants and other external funding for projects.

Application Guidelines

Please submit your resume and cover letter via Macalester’s Employment Opportunities webpage by July 22nd 2021 at 12 noon to be considered. Review of applications will begin immediately. 

All questions regarding this position can be directed to:
Jaclyn Howard
Talent Acquisition Manager
jhoward3@macalester.edu

Macalester is dedicated to the goal of building a culturally diverse and pluralistic staff committed to working in a multicultural environment and strongly encourages applications from everyone who would add richness to our community, including people of color, individuals with disabilities, and women. Candidates of color are strongly encouraged to apply.