Audiovisual Archivist, Documentary Educational Resources, Watertown, MA
Posted October 5, 2017
Audiovisual Archivist Position
Documentary Educational Resources
NEH-Funded Project
DER is seeking a Audiovisual Archivist with experience in metadata and cataloging for a short-term project funded by a National Endowment for the Humanities’ HCRR (Humanities Collections and Reference Resources) foundations grant. The NEH grant provides funding for the planning of an online user- and expert-generated union catalog for ethnographic and folkloric film, called Cinepedia Ethnographica. The qualified candidate will begin in October and the project is expected to last through January 2018.
The Audiovisual Archivist will develop a robust metadata schema (based on an existing schema), develop crosswalks for record import, and create cataloging guidelines in support of subsequent project stages. The Archivist will be expected to meet (by phone) with the Cataloging Task Group to review the sample records from participating institutions, identify metadata requirements for ethnographic film, and gather feedback on the schema as it is developed. Once the schema has been finalized, the Archivist will focus on developing crosswalks for mapping metadata from the schemas represented in the sample records to the Cinepedia Ethnographica metadata schema. The final stage will include testing cataloging assets with incomplete records from participating institutions and developing a cataloging guide for describing and contextualizing ethnographic film assets using best practices.
About DER
Documentary Educational Resources (DER) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded in 1968 and incorporated in 1971 for the purpose of producing and distributing cross-cultural documentary film for educational use. The organization was established by pioneering ethnographic filmmakers, John Marshall and Timothy Asch, whose extensive body of films were among the founding collection of the Smithsonian’s Human Studies Film Archive. DER has built an extensive distribution catalog for the educational market that includes over 800 titles of significant ethnographic, anthropological and social documentary films.
Interested candidates should send a cover letter and resume to [email protected]