University Archivist, UC Riverside

by DavidD
Special Collections/Archives

Position overview

Position title: University Archivist
Anticipated start: Fall/Winter2024

Application Window

Open date: June 20, 2024

Next review date: Monday, Aug 26, 2024 at 11:59pm (Pacific Time)
Apply by this date to ensure full consideration by the committee.

Final date: Monday, Aug 26, 2024 at 11:59pm (Pacific Time)
Applications will continue to be accepted until this date.

Position description

Position Overview

The University of California Riverside seeks a dynamic, innovative and service-oriented University Archivist who shares our excitement for community-engaged collection building and who is an advocate for the utilization of primary source materials to document the diverse voices of students and faculty past and present.In order to assure a more complete record of the University of California, Riverside, the successful candidate will:

Proactively identify defining moments, trends and movements in the University’s history and conduct gap analyses in the institutional records as they now exist to document that history. Moreover, they will develop a comprehensive documentation strategy to ensure that key organizational records routinely are transferred to the University Archives, that the papers of prominent faculty are routinely acquired, and that the records of student groups are acquired as well. The incumbent will critically seek and collect evidence of individuals and groups who are underrepresented in the archive and serve as a collaborative agent in assisting faculty, staff, and researchers to make informed decisions regarding the preservation, reuse, and sharing of the content created by them in the course of their academic pursuits and careers at the University and beyond.

The UA also provides oversight for the University’s Records Retention program, with a focus on education and records management support.

Located an hour’s drive to the east of Los Angeles, an hour west of Palm Springs and the Coachella Valley, an hour east of ocean beaches, ninety minutes north of San Diego, and an hour south of mountain ski resorts, UCR is located in an area of dramatic landscapes and rich cultural traditions. The University is a dynamic, aggressively developing land grant research institution dedicated to preparing its diverse student body to be successful competitors in the world marketplace of ideas.

Over the past few years, UCR has accumulated numerous accolades for its achievements. In 2022, it received the following rankings:

  • No. 1 public university in the U.S. for social mobility four years in a row – U.S. News & World Report
  • No. 1 for Hispanic enrollment among selective universities – Urban Institute
  • No. 2 in the country for financial aid – Business Insider
  • No. 2 in Entomology research in the world – Center for World University Rankings
  • No. 3 in Hispanic STEM graduates in the nation – National Science Foundation
  • No. 4 for Pell Grant student performance – Washington Monthly
  • No. 9 among public universities for sustainability – Princeton Review
  • No. 11 most diverse medical school – U.S. News
  • Top 12 public university – Forbes “America’s Best Value Colleges”
  • No. 14 public university – CNBC “Colleges That Pay Off the Most”
  • No. 20 public university – Princeton Review Best Schools for Making a Public Impact
  • No. 31 in the world in plant and animal sciences – U.S. News & World Report

In addition, it has attracted faculty with some of the highest academic honors, including:

  • 2 Nobel Prize Winners
  • 2 Guggenheim Awards
  • 4 UC University Professorships
  • 11 Fulbright Scholars
  • 28 National Academies Members

The UCR Library is a critical partner in preparing UCR’s students to be globally competitive while simultaneously preparing them to be transformative leaders in the Inland Empire and beyond. The mission of the UCR Library is no less than to bring the world’s information resources to the UCR community and to ensure that UCR students, faculty, and staff have the skills to fully exploit those resources to change the world for the better.

The UCR Library is a team of intensely collaborative, forward-thinking colleagues dedicated to providing exemplary services to our students, faculty, and community members in a rapidly evolving information environment. The successful candidate will be technologically-sophisticated; committed to problem-solving in local, regional, national, and international arenas; able to develop innovative solutions to complex problems; and a dynamic and effective leader.

The UCR Library is comprised of two facilities housing more than 4,900,000 volumes, 1,740,000 electronic books, 120,000 print and electronic journals, and 2,300,000 microforms. The Library provides services to more than 27,000 students and nearly 2,000 faculty and other academics in an institutional environment planning for and experiencing extensive growth. The successful candidate will join an enthusiastic staff of 100, including 36 FTE librarians and 65 FTE staff personnel as well as students, in building a research library of excellence within a dynamic and diverse university ranked among the top 50 in the nation. The UCR Library is a member of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL). Among the unique collections of the UCR Library is the Eaton Collection of Science Fiction and Fantasy, the Water Resources Collections & Archives, the Rupert Costo Library of the American Indian, the Paul Chou Collection of Chinese history and culture, the George Brown Papers, the Tomás Rivera Papers, and the Inland Empire Memories Initiative. Information about the UCR Library is available at http://library.ucr.edu.

The UCR Library is an integral part of the University of California library system. With collections totaling 40.8 million volumes, including 4.3 million digitized contents contributed to HathiTrust, UC’s more than 100 libraries are surpassed in size on the American continent only by the Library of Congress collection. In addition, UC’s California Digital Library (CDL) provides the core of the University’s digital collections. CDL also assists UC to share resources and holdings more effectively, and provides leadership in applying technology to the development of library collections and services. Organizationally situated within the UC Office of the President, the CDL operates in close collaboration with all UC campuses and their libraries.

Responsibilities

Reporting to the Director of Special Collections and University Archives, the University Archivist is responsible for providing leadership in the selection, transfer, description and preservation of official University Records of enduring value.

  • Creates collaborative alliances across the campus between the University Archives and University administrative units, colleges, schools, and academic departments to facilitate routine transfer of records to the University Archives as appropriate;
  • Serves as the primary advocate and representative of the University Archives to the University community and to external organizations and individuals;
  • Provides research assistance and instruction to internal and external constituents in this area, and will promote the visibility and use of the University Archives through teaching, exhibits, programming, and other means, independently and in collaboration with Departmental staff;
  • Provides oversight for the the University’s Records Management program and is responsible for maintaining current best practice knowledge in order to provide consultation and advice on records retention practices;
  • In collaboration with the Director of Special Collections and University Archives, develops the position description for, hires, and manages a full-time Records Management Assistant based on their analysis of the needs of the Records Management program;
  • Serves as the UCR representative to The University Records Management Committee (RMC), Office of the President (UCOP);
  • Processes existing and incoming archival materials using best practices and current national standards, describing collections, and creating finding aids and related records in ArchivesSpace, the department’s archival management system, as appropriate;
  • Projects growth rates of the University Archives collections and communicates those effectively with departmental and library leadership to facilitate long-term collections space planning;
  • Uploads completed finding aids to online public access catalogs including consortial online databases, such as the Online Archive of California, in coordination with the Acquisitions, Description, and Discovery services staff;
  • Integrates digital collections with finding aids and related records, as appropriate, in coordination with Digitization Services and/or Digital Initiatives staff;
  • Raises public awareness of newly processed collections through social media, web-based platforms, and other outlets as appropriate;
  • Collaborates with the Digitization Services Steering Committee to identify University Archives holdings that are candidates for digitization;
  • Assists in developing resources to support class objectives that focus on University Archives;
  • Collaborates with library and other campus resources to curate University history-centered exhibitions and to prepare University history-focused content for multiple outlets including social media and websites;
  • In collaboration with UC Riverside faculty, staff and researchers, provides the necessary information, tools and services to assist them in making informed decisions regarding the preservation, reuse, archiving and sharing of the content created in the course of their teaching/learning, research and other scholarly activities while employed by UC Riverside;
  • Participates in general administrative duties, library-wide activities, committees, special projects and library programs; represents the UCR Library on various University of California standing committees and ad-hoc groups.

UC professional librarians are academic appointees and are represented by an exclusive bargaining unit; The University Council-American Federation of Teachers (UC-AFT). This position is in the bargaining unit.

Appointment at rank of Associate Librarian to Librarian – Potential Career depending upon qualifications and experience. Advancement through the librarian ranks at the University of California is through a series of structured, merit-based evaluations, occurring every two to three years.

See Table 26B Represented Librarian Series (https://www.ucop.edu/academic-personnel-programs/compensation/index.html) for the salary range for this position. A reasonable estimate for this position is $68,885 – $123,789. Excellent retirement system, health, and vacation benefits.

Department: https://library.ucr.edu/

Qualifications

Basic qualifications (required at time of application)

  • Master’s degree from an ALA-accredited Library & Information Science program with a concentration in archives, OR equivalent professional degree in Archival Studies, OR accredited graduate degree (Master’s or Ph.D) with a specialization in archival management, OR an equivalent combination of education and experience;
  • Three (3) years of progressive professional experience in special collections and/or university archives in an academic research institution;
  • Familiarity with preservation or conservation standards and their challenges for a variety of content types (e.g. born or reformatted digital objects as images, sound, moving recordings, data, etc. and print or other hard copy);
  • Familiarity with legal and ethical issues associated with archiving digital and print materials;
  • Demonstrated ability to successfully engage stakeholders in building collections;
  • Fosters a respectful, cooperative, professional and courteous work environment, maintain confidentiality and employ tact and diplomacy;
  • Demonstrated experience in arranging, describing and preserving complex manuscript and/or archival collections;
  • Demonstrated knowledge of and experience with Encoded Archival Description (EAD), Describing Archives: A Content Standard (DACS), or other appropriate professional metadata set used to describe archival collections;
  • Strong organizational skills and the ability to manage and prioritize multiple tasks and projects, working cooperatively with others or independently;
  • Ability to communicate effectively both verbally and in writing;
  • Knowledge of current and emerging trends, issues, workflows, and best practices associated with digital content acquisitions and curation, especially within a Special Collections or Archives environment;
  • Excellent project management skills;
  • Strong interpersonal skills with the ability to work successfully in an intensely collaborative environment with a broad range of people from culturally diverse backgrounds including healthcare providers, colleagues, administrators, students, faculty, donors, and alumni.

Preferred qualifications

  • Knowledge and understanding of descriptive standards such as but not limited to Resource Description and Access (RDA), General International Standard for Archival Description (ISAD(G)), or Dublin Core;
  • Experience using ArchivesSpace, Aeon, Alma and/or other content management and library collections systems;
  • Demonstrated experience designing and executing a records retention schedule;
  • Experience processing archival materials, including digital objects in a university or other institution of higher learning setting;
  • Demonstrated experience providing reference services;
  • Knowledge of at least one language other than English.
  • Academic degree in a related field and/or advanced coursework at the post-graduate level;
  • UCR is a world-class research university with an exceptionally diverse undergraduate student body. Its mission is explicitly linked to providing routes to educational success for underrepresented and first-generation college students. A commitment to this mission is a preferred qualification.

Application Requirements

Document requirements

  • Curriculum Vitae – Your most recently updated C.V.
  • Cover Letter
  • Statement of Research (Optional)
  • Statement of Teaching (Optional)
  • Statement of Past and/or Planned Future Contributions to Advancing Diversity and Inclusive Excellence – In a “Statement of Past and/or Planned Future Contributions to Advancing Diversity and Inclusive Excellence”, we ask applicants to describe their past and/or potential future contributions to promoting a diverse, equitable, and inclusive environment, which is a key requirement of the role of every faculty member and administrator at UCR. There are numerous ways to contribute, and a commitment to this part of our mission can be reflected through research, teaching, supervision, mentoring, community engagement, service, and any of the other varied activities that are a part of an academic career.
  • Misc / Additional (Optional)

Reference requirements

  • 3-5 required (contact information only)

Please provide contact information for a minimum of three references.

Apply link: https://aprecruit.ucr.edu/JPF01939

Help contact: jennifer.rodriguez@ucr.edu

About UC Riverside

The University of California, Riverside is a world-class research university with an exceptionally diverse undergraduate student body. UCR is a member institution of the American Association of Universities (AAU) as well as the Alliance of Hispanic Serving Research Universities (HSRU). Its mission is explicitly linked to providing routes to educational success for underrepresented and first-generation college students. A commitment to this mission is a preferred qualification.The University of California is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer. All qualified candidates will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability or protected veteran status.

For the University of California’s Affirmative Action Policy please visit: https://www.ucop.edu/academic-personnel-programs/_files/apm/apm-035.pdf.

For the University of California’s Anti-Discrimination Policy, please visit: https://policy.ucop.edu/doc/1001004/Anti-Discrimination.

As a University employee, you will be required to comply with all applicable University policies and/or collective bargaining agreements, as may be amended from time to time. Federal, State, or local government directives may impose additional requirements.

Job location

Riverside, CA