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Digital Projects Librarian, Lowcountry Digital Library, Charleston, SC

Posted March 7, 2018

The Digital Projects Librarian serves as Project Coordinator to both the Lowcountry Digital Library (LCDL) and the Lowcountry Digital History Initiative (LDHI), striving to expand these projects and promote the history of the region. They will work with librarians, faculty members, and LCDL and LDHI partners, scholars, and contributors to digitize collections and create digital exhibits that support research about the Lowcountry region of South Carolina and historically interconnected sites in the Atlantic World. This position will keep abreast of trends in the creation, and maintenance of digital public humanities projects, digital collections, and digital exhibits, and will make recommendations to improve methodologies, procedures, and access at the College. They will work to assess complex digital history project requirements and provide quality technical solutions to Library, College, and regional partners. The Digital Projects Librarian will work with the Directors of the Lowcountry Digital Library and the Lowcountry Digital History Initiative to continue to create and manage the creation of digital scholarly content that fits within the scope of these projects. This position reports to the Digital Services Coordinator and is a member of the Collection and Content Services team.

Responsibilities and Duties

Digital History – 45% of Effort

  • Develops, maintains, and promotes the Lowcountry Digital History Initiative (LDHI) as an award-winning, collaborative digital public history project that highlights underrepresented race, class, gender, and labor histories within the Lowcountry region, and in historically interconnected Atlantic World sites.
  • Establishes replicable project templates and workflows for digital public history projects and digital exhibits.
  • Performs editorial and layout responsibilities for LDHI digital projects.
  • Trains and supervises graduate assistants, staff and/or student employees on image research, interactive media (digital timelines, maps, etc.) creation, public history best practices and methodologies, and digital exhibit construction.
  • Initiates, identifies, and develops relationships with scholars, librarians, archivists, and other professionals to create LDHI digital exhibits.
  • Researches and develops grant proposals relating to digital public history and digital exhibit creation.
  • Provides consultations on digital humanities and digital history projects and digital exhibit design and execution.

Digital Libraries – 45% of Effort

  • Builds and manages the Lowcountry Digital Library (LCDL) as the premier multi-institutional repository of digitized cultural heritage materials related to the Lowcountry region of South Carolina and historically interconnected sites in the Atlantic World.
  • Coordinates and manages the daily operations of the LCDL Digitization Lab, including scheduling and quality control activities for both digitization and metadata creation.
  • Designs, documents and oversees efficient digital production workflows supporting the creation of digital objects that conform to LCDL, South Carolina Digital Library, and Digital Public Library of America standards.
  • Investigates and recommends digitization hardware and software.
  • Communicates with vendors on issues related to hardware and software in the digitization lab.
  • Trains and supervises staff and student employees on digitization and metadata creation. Provides training to all digital library partners on digitization and metadata creation as needed.
  • Provides consultations on topics including metadata creation, digitization, digital content migration, and digital preservation.

Library and College Affairs – 10% of Effort

  • Undertakes research and/or professional development related to professional and scholarly interests.
  • Serves on library, college, and professional committees, as elected and assigned

Required and Preferred Qualifications

Required Qualifications

  • An advanced degree in library science, public history, or a relevant humanities field (such as history or museum studies) with at least one year of library experience required. Dual masters degrees, MA in Public History and MLS/MLIS or equivalent, from an ALA accredited program, preferred.
  • Interest, background, scholarly expertise, and/or professional experience related to digital humanities, Southern and/or Atlantic world history and culture, public history, and museums.
  • Project management experience.
  • Knowledge of emerging technology trends related to digital humanities, digital exhibits, digitization, metadata creation, and digital preservation.
  • Knowledge of non-MARC metadata standards (MODS, Dublin Core, etc.) and controlled vocabularies (LCSH, AAT, etc.).
  • Knowledge of digital asset management systems.
  • Familiarity with web programming languages including HTML and CSS.
  • Evidence of ability to do research, publication and service consonant with College standards for promotion and tenure.
  • Strong interpersonal, organizational and communication skills.
  • Ability to communicate with technical and non-technical individuals.

Preferred Qualifications: 

  • Dual Masters, with one degree being an advanced degree in a relevant humanities field (such as public history, history, or museum studies) and an MLS/MLIS or equivalent, from an ALA accredited program.
  • Experience with a variety of controlled vocabularies and non-MARC metadata standards used in digital collections, including EAD, MODS and Dublin Core.
  • Proven experience with repository systems such as Omeka, Fedora Commons, and Dspace.
  • Experience with content management systems.
  • Experience handling archives and special collections materials.
  • Strong editorial background.
  • Training and supervisory experience.
  • Grant writing experience.
  • Understanding of copyright laws and rights management issues in a digital environment.
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