Digitization Coordinator, Amherst College, Amherst, MA

Full-time, year-round position, grade 18, hourly rate commensurate with experience and qualifications.

The Amherst College Library seeks a “Digitization Coordinator” to coordinate digital reformatting operations aimed at preserving and improving access to library and archival collections in all formats. The Coordinator trains and supervises student digitization workers. In collaboration with colleagues, creates and documents digital production workflows and processes. Occasionally works with outside vendors to digitize specialized formats. Helps develop, cultivate, and support a diverse student workforce. Leads in efforts to create a respectful, inclusive, and welcoming environment.

Amherst has profoundly transformed its student body in terms of socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and nationality, among other areas. Today, nearly one quarter of Amherst’s students consists of Pell Grant recipients, and many more are first-generation students; nearly half of our students are non-immigrant minorities. We seek candidates who have experience working in a multicultural environment and/or are interested in supporting a diverse student body.

Principal Duties and Responsibilities:

• Coordinates the daily operations of the Digital Production Studio, including digitization, color management, and quality control activities.
• Evaluates requirements of digitization projects and makes recommendations for appropriate methods of capture.
• Digitizes archival material.
• Trains digitization staff and student employees.
• Supervises student employees, sets and coordinates work schedules, oversees and evaluates work performed by students, and sets and enforces workplace expectations.
• Manages quality control for material digitized in-house.
• Tracks digitization statistics.
• Coordinates overall digital collections workflow, involving pre-digitization surveys, digitization, review, coordination with metadata specialists, and hand-offs for ingest into the digital collection.
• Manages storage of digital content on servers prior to ingest into the digital collection.
• Maintains digitization priority list with colleagues.
• Participates in department planning.
• Designs, documents, and oversees efficient digital production workflows supporting the creation of digital objects that conform to digital library standards
• Investigates and recommends digitization hardware and software; monitors and maintains specialized hardware and software to capture, manipulate, and save images.
• Contributes to the development of policies, guidelines, and best practices; maintains documentation on digitization best practices.
• Selects vendors to digitize collections as needed, in consultation with supervisor.
• Communicates with vendors on issues related to hardware, software, and digitization of special formats such as audio and video.
• Works with digitization vendors to establish project requirements and ensure quality of digital objects.
• Performs other duties/functions as requested.