Collections Strategist, MIT Libraries, Cambridge MA
Posted June 12, 2014
COLLECTIONS STRATEGIST (Arts and Humanities)
Collections Strategy and Management
Librarian II/III
The MIT Libraries seeks a Collections Strategist who is an adaptive, innovative and process-driven strategic thinker. This position contributes to the Collections Strategy and Management (CSM) Department’s leadership role in developing a holistic strategy for collections within the library, publishing and scholarly communities, and will serve as CSM’s lead strategist for the Arts and Humanities collections.
The Collections Strategist will participate with department colleagues in the development and implementation of the Libraries collections policies and strategies. S/he will manage approval plan content; participate in prioritizing and spending designated central funds; and help with the selection of major interdisciplinary resources and packages. The Strategist will gather and organize collections data from a variety of tools and sources and coordinate its use in collections work, and, through analysis and assessment, use it to guide strategy changes. S/he will also provide leadership to selected collections-related projects.
The incumbent will join the highly collaborative Arts and Humanities Community of Practice (A&H CoP), which serves as a forum for the 10 member group to discuss topics of mutual interest to selectors’ communities. Promoting a strategic and holistic approach to collections work, the Strategist will engage with selectors in building collections, work with them and provide training to ensure best collections practices, and help the CoP think about collections work within the broader context of outreach, access, metadata creation, rights management and curation. S/he will monitor funds; manage gift/endowed fund expenditures according to donors’ intent; and contribute to resource development and donor stewardship including identifying and articulating collections needs.
The Arts and Humanities at MIT are particularly vibrant and interdisciplinary, and play a crucial role in an MIT education. The Collection Strategist will have selection responsibilities for general subject resources and monographs that serve broad aspects of the A&H community’s research needs as well as topics that cross subject areas, such as cultural studies, and will support other library services for the community. S/he will be engaged with colleagues around significant issues in the Arts and Humanities and keep abreast of collection trends and publisher changes.
REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS for the position include:
* ALA-MLS/MLIS or equivalent advanced degree in library or information science
* Bachelor’s degree in the Arts or Humanities or significant experience working with Arts or Humanities collections, including a deep understanding of the literature and information sources used in one or more disciplines
* Minimum of five years’ collection development experience in an academic/research/special library
* Highly developed communication skills, both oral and written, including experience producing reports and communicating findings for diverse audiences
* Excellent interpersonal skills, including ability to effectively collaborate with colleagues
* Evidence of ability or potential to lead change and implement new services and work methods
* A collaborative approach to problem solving and working across organizational boundaries
* Strong analytical skills
* Ability to be flexible and to successfully manage competing deadlines
* Experience working with vendors of scholarly research products
* Demonstrated project management skills
Preferred
* Advanced degree in the Arts or Humanities
* Demonstrated vendor negotiation skills
* Grant writing experience
SALARY AND BENEFITS: $61,000 minimum. Actual salary and appointment level (Librarian II or III) will depend on qualifications and experience. MIT offers excellent benefits including a choice of health and retirement plans, a dental plan, tuition assistance and a relocation allowance. The MIT Libraries afford a flexible and collegial working environment and foster professional growth of staff with management training and travel funding for professional meetings.
Apply online at: http://hrweb.mit.edu/staffing/
The MIT Libraries support the Institute’s programs of research and study with holdings of more than 2.9 million print volumes and 3.1 million special format items, and terabytes of MIT-owned digital content. In addition, rare special collections, Institute records, historical documents, and papers of noted faculty are held in the Institute Archives and Special Collections. Library resources and services are accessible to students and researchers through the Libraries’ website (http://libraries.mit.edu/), and library spaces are widely available for both collaborative work and quiet study. Library resources are supplemented by innovative services for bioinformatics, GIS, metadata, social science and other research data. Through a culture that encourages innovation and collaboration, the MIT Libraries are redefining the role of the 21st century library – making collections more accessible than ever before, and shaping the future of scholarly research. Library staff, at all levels, contribute to this spirit of innovation and to the mission of promoting learning, discovery and the advancement of knowledge at MIT and beyond.
The Libraries maintain memberships and affiliations in ArchivesSpace, arXiv, Association of Research Libraries, the BorrowDirect, Boston Library Consortium, DDI Alliance, DuraSpace, HathiTrust, CLIR/Digital Library Federation, Coalition of Networked Information, Coalition of Open Access Policy Institutions, EDUCAUSE, National Digital Stewardship Alliance, NISO, North East Research Libraries, OCLC Research Library Partnership, and ORCID. The Libraries utilize Ex Libris’ Aleph for its integrated library system and have recently deployed EBSCO’s Discovery Service. DSpace@MIT, a digital repository developed over the past ten years by the MIT Libraries, serves to capture, preserve and communicate the intellectual output of MIT’s faculty and research community. Other MIT repositories include: Dome, a second DSpace instance, providing access to a sizable image collection and other digital collections owned by the MIT Libraries; the MIT Geodata Repository for a diverse collection of GIS Data; and MIT’s DataVerse for licensed social science datasets.