Archivist, Naval Historical Collection, U. S. Naval War College, Newport RI

Posted December 20, 2013

The Naval Historical Collection (NHC) at U. S. Naval War College is seeking applications and nominations for an energetic and innovative professional to fill the position of Archivist. This position reports to the Head Archivist and will participate in appraisal, accessioning, description, capturing oral histories, government records management and developing the NHC Website. Critical to this position will be participating in a new vision for the NHC that bridges traditional archival practices with the growing focus on digital curation, preservation and long-term information stewardship.

The U.S. Naval War College

The U.S. Naval War College, located on Coasters Harbor Island, Naval Station Newport, Rhode Island, was founded more than 125 years ago as a small institution with mostly summer courses. It has evolved into a one-year, resident program that graduates about 600 students a year, and a robust distance education program that graduates about 1,000 students a year. Students earn Joint Professional Military Education (JPME) credit and either a diploma or a master’s degree in National Security and Strategic Studies.

Established in 1884, the U.S. Naval War College is the oldest institution of its kind in the world. More than 50,000 students have graduated since its first class of 9 students in 1885 and about 300 of today’s active-duty admirals and generals and senior executive service leaders are alumni.

Just as our educational programs have expanded in depth and reach, so have the research and analysis efforts conducted by our Center for Naval Warfare Studies. Through war games, conferences, workshops, and publications, our research arm provides direct curriculum support to our educational programs and focused, task-driven analysis for fleet customers and government agencies across the national security spectrum.

The Naval War College Library
Our Library is reinventing itself as a Learning Commons, recapturing its role as the academic center of the U.S. Naval War College by utilizing a full range of research, academic resources and technology tools. In support of this goal, the Library is scheduled to undergo extensive renovation and expansion beginning in 2014.

The library is named in honor of Rear Admiral Henry Effingham Eccles, a distinguished logistician from the Second World War. The Library and Naval Historical Collection are staffed by 26 individuals, the majority of whom hold Master’s degrees in Library and Information Science. The Library consists of three primary units:

The Main Library, located on the main and lower levels of Hewitt Hall, houses the reference collection, periodicals collection, microform collection, rare book collection, federal (Superintendent of Documents) depository collection, and general circulating collection. The Main Library contains over 270,000 books and documents, over 1,700 periodical titles (of which over 750 are current subscriptions), over 500,000 microforms, and access to about 60 online database systems, many of which contain full text e-books and journal articles.

The Classified Library Branch, housed in a secure vault within the Main Library, contains over 53,000 titles (Naval Warfare Publications, CD-ROMs, DVDs, cassettes, voice recordings) and more than 80,000 volumes. Students, faculty, and staff with SECRET security clearances may use the Classified Library’s SIPRNet access for searching classified online resources and sending/receiving classified e-mail.

On average, faculty, students and staff visit our online services 100,000 times each year and during those visits conduct about 170,000 searches. Actual visits to the NWC Library are difficult to measure because there are multiple ingresses and egresses. One controlled gate count records 106,000 visitors each year. We circulate approximately 15,000 books and process about 2,500 requests for materials through Interlibrary loans each year.

The Naval Historical Collection
The Naval Historical Collection (NHC) is the custodian of the Naval War College’s 128 year history, the history of the Navy in Narragansett Bay, and naval warfare as practiced during the last 200 years. Established in 1969 and located in Mahan Hall, the collection’s primary source materials are of interest to naval historians, scholars, and students of American military and diplomatic history, Naval War College students, faculty and staff, and the general public.

The Naval War College archives contain more than 1,200 feet of records documenting the administrative and curricular history of the institution since its founding in 1884. The archives house 45 record groups, including administrative correspondence, curriculum items and publications, conference proceedings, library records, lectures, faculty and staff presentations, theses, World War II Battle Evaluation Group records, and a vast array of intelligence and technical source materials pertaining to technological developments and strategic and tactical problems of interest to the Navy.

The archives contains more than 266 manuscript collections containing the personal and official papers of Naval War College presidents, professors, and naval officers who have served on the staff or have been affiliated with the institution during the years, including those of Alfred Thayer Mahan, Stephen B. Luce, Raymond A. Spruance, H. Kent Hewitt and James B. Stockdale.

In addition to the larger collections, single manuscript items represent a growing and unique body of documents available for research. There are now more than 636 letters, journals, letterpress volumes, certificates, commissions, and signatures stored in the Naval Historical Collection. Representative holdings in this category range from letters of Admirals David Farragut, Elmo Zumwalt, Jr., and William Leahy to a 1783 paymaster’s book from the USS Alliance, which was homeported in Providence at the time.

The Naval Historical Collection’s current Strategic Plan addresses the preservation, facilities, and environmental requirements for the collection, as well as the pressing need to digitize collections for accessibility by researchers worldwide.

For additional information or to apply for this position, watch for announcements in USAJOBS https://www.usajobs.gov/GetJob/ViewDetails/357844500