Archivist and Digital Recordkeepers, Malae Family Archive, Ashfield, MA

Posted July 28, 2025

Job Description

We are creating a digital archive to repatriate community cultural heritage collections to Timor-Leste, focused on the Makassae Indigenous group in the Quelicai region. These collections include ethnographic and historical materials from 1973–74, produced by Shepard Forman, an anthropologist, and Leona Forman, a Brazilian journalist. The MFA is in the process of being digitized and also expanded into a living archive with new narratives and metadata developed in close collaboration with the local community. The MFA is being developed by the URCA Institute, run by their daughter, Alexandra Joy Forman in Brazil. The URCA Institute is a nonprofit organization based in Rio de Janeiro dedicated to preserving cultural memory through community-centered storytelling, oral history, and digital archiving.

Position Overview:
Archivist and digital recordkeepers will work closely with the Forman family team to catalog and preserve the archival collections of the Malae Family Archive.

Goals:

Proactively arrange and describe records of historical and cultural significance to create series and subseries of the following document types: Field notes, journals, letters, genealogies, audio tapes, photographs, articles and books, art objects.
Apply best practices in conservation of physical items, including digital preservation strategies to ensure long-term preservation, including digitalization.
Managing documents and records from their creation, ensuring their integrity, authenticity, and usability.

Key Responsibilities, Archive Management and Recordkeeping:

Cataloging physical items in the Malae (Forman) Family Archive, maintaining clear, accurate data entry, and consistent records for collections, series, and individual records.
Digitize documents, negatives, and books. Photograph objects. Record people.
Cataloguing, preserving, and mapping files both physically (in boxes) and digitally (online storage, hard drives, and archive).
Creating metadata and descriptions of physical condition, appearance, and content.
Preserving the original order of records, maintaining their structure and relationships to reflect their original contexts. Mapping new relationships.
Manually handling and preserving various materials and objects within the archive.
Securing appropriate storage of delicate materials.
Translating and bridging information (interoperability) between physical and digital cataloging systems.
Bibliographic and iconic research.
Recording conversations with Shepard and Leona Forman in their home about the archive materials, capturing their memories.
Liaising with Leona and Shepard Forman and working collaboratively with Jacob Forman in Los Angeles, and Alexandra Forman and Darius Korman in Brazil and with Mollie Metevier at Simmons College.

Project Organization and Communication:

Providing weekly reporting on the status of ongoing tasks, providing clear communication with the project team.
Creating and maintaining spreadsheets to catalog and track inventory, project timelines, and budgets.
Organizing and maintaining both digital and physical project files, ensuring efficiency and accessibility.

Work Conditions:

WHEN AND WHERE: Up to 20 hours per week in Ashfield, MA, during August and September 2025.
HOW: On-site work with physical archive materials with potential for continued remote work for digital tasks.
HOW MUCH: Entry to Mid-level $18–$22 per hour
EXPERIENCE: Omeka S, OHMS, RiC, LOD, EXCEL
LANGUAGES: Portuguese, Tetum, Makassae, not required but very helpful.

How to Apply

Thank you for your interest in participating in our Malae Family Archive initiative. As part of our process, we would love to learn more about your background, motivations and skillsets. Send your responses to Malae Family Archive at [email protected]

Please write a paragraph (up to a full page) describing your experience and skills for working on this particular archive and tell us what drives your desires and intentions more generally in the fields of cultural patrimony, preservation, and archiving.
Additionally, please attach a current version of your CV.
Please let us know if you have specialized skillsets, work with digitalization or digital archiving, if you are comfortable using Excel, OMEKA S, OHMS, Google Drive, Microsoft apps.