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Engagement and Use Manager, Media Library and Archives, WGBH, Boston, MA

Posted June 27, 2017

Are you passionate and making history relevant and meaningful? Do you have experience engaging audiences in discovery and use of cultural heritage collections? Do you love public media? If so, then this position may be fit for you! The WGBH Media Library and Archives (MLA) is hiring an Engagement and Use Manager to lead outreach initiatives for the American Archive of Public Broadcasting.

Department Overview

The MLA establishes the policies and procedures for the access, acquisition, intellectual control, and preservation of WGBH’s physical media and digital production and administrative assets. The MLA also offers production organization of archival materials from projects start up to shut down, research services, rights clearances, and licenses WGBH stock footage.

WGBH and the Library of Congress steward the American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB), an initiative seeking to preserve and make accessible significant historical content created by public media. To date, we have digitized more than 40,000 hours of public television and radio content. The entire collection is available for research on location at WGBH and the Library of Congress, and more than 20,000 programs are available anywhere in the US in our Online Reading Room at americanarchive.org.

Position Overview

Reporting to the Associate Director, the Engagement and Use (EU) Manager will lead ambitious outreach and audience engagement campaigns for the American Archive of Public Broadcasting. The EU Manager will collaborate with the Project Director and Associate Director to establish an AAPB Scholarly Advisory Committee and Station Advisory Committee. The EU Manager will oversee communications with these committees and the existing AAPB Executive Advisory Council, including setting up meetings, focus groups, gathering suggestions and feedback, and working with the Project Team to implement recommendations made by the Committees and Council. The EU Manager will further collaborate with members of the Scholar Advisory Committee to engage their college and graduate students in making use of the AAPB collection as part of course curriculum. Projects may include working with students and faculty on exhibit curation projects as well as making use of the AAPB collection as a data set for text mining and analysis. The EU Manager will curate three new exhibits on the AAPB website and add up to 5,000 programs to the Online Reading Room. The EU Manager will enhance and implement the AAPB’s social media strategy and will create and share native content on social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and potentially other platforms. The EU Manager will contribute to outreach efforts to encourage growth of the AAPB collection, assisting stations in creating and sharing metadata and delivering files to the AAPB, in coordination with the Project Assistants. The EU Manager will also lead strategic outreach efforts around AAPB’s crowdsourcing game FIX IT and potential future Zooniverse metadata tagging project. The EU Manager will be assigned other tasks as time permits and priority dictates.

Skills Required

  • 1-2 years experience coordinating successful projects
  • Excellent cross-functional project management skills
  • Superior critical-thinking and problem solving skills
  • Strong analytical and quantitative skills; ability to use hard data and metrics to back up assumptions, recommendations and drive actions
  • Strengths in problem solving, issue-resolution, attention to detail, and ability to successfully manage multiple complex projects simultaneously
  • Excellent organizational skills
  • Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, both written and verbal
  • Demonstrated experience engaging with and influencing external collaborators and other internal departments
  • Experience with exhibit curation
  • Experience leading outreach efforts at a cultural heritage institution
  • Social media experience
  • Familiarity with United States copyright law, including the doctrine of fair use
  • An appreciation for and an understanding of the public media landscape

Educational Requirements

Bachelor’s degree required, Master’s degree in Library and Information Science, Public History, Moving Image Archive Preservation or equivalent highly preferred.

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