Marketing and Communications Officer, MIT Libraries, Cambridge, MA

Posted July 9, 2015

The MIT Libraries seek an enthusiastic and entrepreneurial professional to provide leadership to a wide range of internal and external marketing and communications activities that promote the Libraries’ resources, services, and programs. This position provides the opportunity to direct an established program and to lead it forward with innovative strategies that advance the mission of a dynamic research library.

RESPONSIBILITIES: Reporting to the Associate Director for Administration and working closely with the senior leadership team, the Marketing and Communications Officer provides direction, coordination, and support for all marketing, communications, advertising, promotion and outreach efforts across the organization. They manage the Libraries’ presence and message across print and digital news channels, including social media, and ensure cohesive branding, style and voice across all content and communications. As the lead for the Libraries’ news program, the M/C Officer provides editorial and content oversight for the News & Events site, edits stories submitted by staff correspondents, and works in collaboration with the User Experience team in defining and requesting functional requirements.

The M/C Officer serves as the Libraries’ media relations contact, working with the MIT News Office, MIT Communications Group, and external news organizations on key messaging and public relations efforts. They contribute news stories to MIT Campus News and take initiative in suggesting and drafting news items or stories that increase the visibility of the Libraries’ activities and programs. The M/C Officer is the lead writer, editor, and project manager for Bibliotech, the Libraries’ bi-annual publication for friends, donors, and faculty. They also draft and edit key communications for the Director of Libraries and others, and identify opportunities for highlevel library-related communications internal and external to MIT.

The M/C Officer leads the Libraries’ Marketing, Social Media, and News Teams and provides guidance and training in journalistic writing, image selection, and standards to help build skills within the library staff. They are responsible for hiring and managing outside vendors (designers, printers, video crews) for marketing and communications projects and provide oversight of design for marketing and communications materials (e.g. templates, promotional videos). The M/C Officer is a contributor to the Libraries’ resource development efforts, collaborating with RD staff, contributing writing and editorial support to donor fundraising efforts, and contributing content to the Libraries’ Giving website. As a member of Library Council, they work closely with leadership to develop, maintain and assess communications and marketing strategies across all library departments. It is expected that the M/C Officer will retain a keen knowledge and awareness of current trends in social and other mass media so as to keep library M/C efforts at the forefront in an evolving and dynamic media landscape.

QUALIFICATIONS: Required – Bachelor’s degree in Communications, Marketing, Journalism or related field. Minimum of three years’ professional communications experience. Exceptional writing and editorial skills as well as strong presentation skills. Experience in print and digital communications, including solid facility with social media. Familiarity and basic experience with web content management systems (e.g. WordPress and Drupal) and Adobe graphics/imaging tools, and demonstrated capacity for independent exploration of appropriate technologies. Demonstrated experience in or capacity for developing creative and entrepreneurial approaches to marketing and communications. Strong interpersonal skills with ability to collaborate and work successfully across organizational boundaries and with diverse staff. Demonstrated success in managing competing priorities and deadlines, and ability to be flexible, adapt and learn quickly.

SALARY AND BENEFITS: $75,000 minimum; actual salary commensurate with qualifications and experience. MIT offers excellent benefits including a choice of health and retirement plans, a dental plan, and tuition assistance. 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.

APPLICATION PROCESS: Apply online at: http://hrweb.mit.edu/staffing/. Please include cover letter, resume, and contact information for three references. Review of applications will begin August 3, 2015 and continue until position is filled. MIT is strongly and actively committed to diversity within its community and particularly encourages applications from qualified women and minority candidates. Direct link to posting.

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.