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Management & Social Sciences Librarian for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, MIT, Cambridge, MA

Posted August 24, 2015

The MIT Libraries seek an enthusiastic and collaborative professional for a new position to support innovation and entrepreneurship activities across MIT while also serving as a subject liaison to the Economics department. MIT’s preeminence in entrepreneurship and the recent launch of the MIT Innovation Initiative (MITii) presents an opportunity for a dynamic and inventive librarian to develop and deliver services for a vibrant, fast paced and highly interdisciplinary community.

The Innovation and Entrepreneurship Librarian serves as the Libraries’ expert on the research, teaching and learning practices related to innovation and entrepreneurship activities across the Institute, particularly within the Sloan School of Management and the School of Engineering. In this role they maintain an active outreach role and collaborate with colleagues in other library departments to understand and support project partnerships and teaching and learning needs related to innovation and entrepreneurship across disciplines at MIT. The Librarian will also serve as the liaison to the Economics Department and participate in providing in-depth reference support at Dewey Library. They will select and advocate for the acquisition and discovery of research materials for business, management, economics and other fields as appropriate.

The Innovation and Entrepreneurship Librarian reports to a manager in Liaison, Instruction & Reference Services. They participate actively in department and system-wide initiatives, serve on committees and task forces, and take on leadership or service coordination roles as needed. The incumbent is expected to engage professionally through research, writing or presentations and/or professional service activities.

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS for the position include:

  • MLS/MLIS or an advanced degree in business, management or economics or related fields.
  • Experience in developing creative and entrepreneurial approaches to promoting and delivering reference, instruction and/or outreach services to a research community.
  • Demonstrated familiarity with a range of current trends in academia such as entrepreneurship (across disciplines), experiential learning, open access, intellectual property issues.
  • Familiarity with or capacity to learn about and support the business needs of scientists and engineers.
  • Demonstrated skills and strategies for developing and maintaining relationships with diverse user communities.
  • Ability to develop creative strategies to address complex business research information needs.
  • A strong record of effective collaboration on teams, collaborative problem-solving in service of user needs, working across boundaries, evaluating project outcomes.
  • Project or liaison work that demonstrates skills in working independently, taking initiative, flexibility and managing competing priorities.
  • Facility, mastery, and independent exploration of appropriate technologies in service of user needs.
  • Highly developed communication skills, both oral and written

Preferred:

  • MSLIS and an advanced degree in business, management, economics or related field.
  • A deep understanding of the literature and information sources used in business, management, finance or economics sufficient to provide high quality support to advanced students and researchers.
  • Familiarity with emerging trends and techniques in business research.
  • Familiarity and experience working with data sources in economics and/or other social sciences.
  • Knowledge of scholarly communication practices in business, management and economics, particularly trends and challenges related to open access.

SALARY AND BENEFITS:

$55,000 is minimum entry-level salary. Actual salary and appointment classification (Librarian I or II, or other) 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/. Applications must include cover letter, resume, and contact information for three references. Priority will be given to applications received by September 21, 2015; position open until filled. MIT is strongly and actively committed to diversity within its community and particularly encourages applications from qualified women and minority candidates.

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, ORCID, and TRAIL. 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.

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