Digital Scholarship Librarian
Walter C. Koerner Library | Vancouver Campus
Full Time, Term
Anticipated Start Date: November 15, 2024
UBC LIBRARY
As one of the world’s leading universities, the University of British Columbia creates an exceptional learning environment that fosters global citizenship, advances a civil and sustainable society, and supports outstanding research to serve the people of British Columbia, Canada and the world.
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The University of British Columbia Library is one of the largest academic libraries in Canada and consistently ranks among the top university research libraries in North America. UBC Library has 14 branches and divisions across two campuses (Vancouver and Kelowna), including an off-site hospital library; a multi-purpose teaching and learning facility, the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre; and the Xwi7xwa Library, a centre for academic and community Indigenous scholarship. Almost 300 knowledgeable employees – librarians, management and professional staff, support staff and student staff – provide users with the excellent resources and services that they need to further their research, teaching and learning.
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ABOUT THE WALTER C. KOERNER LIBRARY
The Walter C. Koerner Library is home to the humanities and social sciences at UBC Library, offering a wealth of collections and services to support research, teaching, and learning in these subjects. Koerner Library is also home to the Research Commons, which provides support for researchers across campus in the areas of data visualization and analysis, GIS / geospatial data, digital scholarship, research data management and citation management. Along with these two units, Koerner Library houses the Scholarly Communications, cIRcle and Copyright units, Borrower Services, and University leadership.
Koerner Library provides a welcoming learning and research-driven environment for students, faculty and community members. Our service model is user-focused and includes offering one-to-one assistance and classroom instruction for our users. The Koerner Library is named in honour of Walter C.
Koerner, recognizing his lifetime commitment to and support of the University and the Library and his substantial gift toward the construction of Koerner Library.
POSITION OVERVIEW
Koerner Library and the UBC Library Research Commons provide services and collections to support the research needs of students, faculty, and staff, with a prioritization for graduate students in the interdisciplinary UBC Library Research Commons. The Digital Scholarship Librarian works within the Koerner Library while providing campus-wide service development and support across all departments and in the Research Commons.
The Digital Scholarship Librarian develops and maintains a dynamic, multifaceted program that addresses the growing demand for digital scholarship partnerships and support on campus. The librarian works closely with the UBC Library Research Commons, Digital Programs and Services, Digital Scholarship in Arts (DiSA), Advanced Research Computing (ARC), and other campus entities to identify innovative and evolving digital tools and resources that advance scholarly investigation with novel digital tools and methods, while building on traditional research methodologies. The Digital Scholarship Librarian is a change agent, partner, and resource person for librarians and specialists involved in facilitating faculty and student digital projects and keeps abreast of the campus environment to identify emerging areas of interest.
In addition to digital scholarship responsibilities, the librarian will assume disciplinary support duties in Sociology for approximately 30% of their time.
QUALIFICATIONS
Required
- Masters-level degree from an accredited program of library or information science, or equivalent internationally accredited program.
- Strong information and digital literacy skills.
- A proactive, user-centered vision of services and a commitment to responsive and innovative service practices.
- Familiarity with research methodologies across many disciplines including emerging tools and technologies relevant to the production, dissemination and reception of research.
- Familiarity with digital scholarship research tools and approaches (one or more of text mining, data analysis and visualization, text encoding, image analysis, augmented reality, machine learning, or digital exhibits), and the ability to provide research and consultation services to researchers with varying levels of technical expertise.
- Understanding of data and metadata issues in the research lifecycle.
- Experience developing and delivering instructional sessions, teaching technical workshops, and making presentations.
- Demonstrated ability to initiate, plan and carry out projects independently and as a team member; flexibility, and willingness to assume various assignments.
- Open to experiment with and improvise new ways of approaching processes, tasks or problems.
- Excellent written and oral communication skills; models and demonstrates good communication through active listening and appreciative inquiry and open to providing and receiving timely, constructive feedback.
- Ability to recognize, respect and work effectively with individuals and groups with diverse perspectives and backgrounds; takes initiative in learning about language and issues relating to equity and diversity.
- Willingness to respect diverse perspectives, including perspectives in conflict with one’s own.
- Demonstrates a commitment to enhancing one’s own awareness, knowledge, and skills related to equity, diversity, and inclusion.
Preferred
- Academic background or relevant experience in digital scholarship.
- Familiarity with bibliographic management tools in academic institutions and trends in library collections.
- Demonstrated ability to work collaboratively with faculty, librarians, and others to advance research projects.
- Experience supervising student employees and/or staff, preferably in a unionized environment.
- Programming or scripting experience, or experience working with programmers in an academic setting.
- Demonstrated capability in humanities and social sciences research methods and tools such as quantitative or qualitative data skills, knowledge synthesis, research data management, or other related skills.
- A solid understanding of the research process and how new tools and technologies affect the production, dissemination and reception of research in the humanities and social sciences.
- Experience with collections development for both print and electronic resources.
- Experience selecting and curating software especially for research.
- Awareness of trends in digital Experience with writing grant proposals.
WORKING RELATIONSHIPS
Reports to the Head of Koerner Library. In consultation with the Head, plans and implements digital scholarship services for users. Consults and works collaboratively with colleagues within Koerner Library and across the Library in the provision of services. A high degree of planning, collaboration and coordination is required with colleagues in the Library, including the Research Data Management Librarian, GIS and Maps Librarian, Data Librarian; as well as the , Digital Programs and Services and Technology, Discovery and User Experience units. Actively collaborates beyond the Library with UBC IT staff, ARC, and other campus and external partners. The Digital Scholarship Librarian will foster successful adoption and application of digital scholarship methods and tools for research, teaching and learning, and do so in collaboration with faculty, students and librarians. Works in collaboration with UBC Collections Services to support the collections needs around digital scholarship topics including text and data mining and software licensing. Supervises the work of students in the provision of services and may supervise staff.
DUTIES
Digital Scholarship
- Provide expertise to scholars and students across disciplines on digital techniques and tools that will advance their research and the Library’s contributions to faculty and student research projects that are partially enabled by or completely reliant on digital methods.
- Serve as a strategist and resource person for the Library on trends in the digital scholarship across disciplines. Provide support and regular training programs for the Library staff focused on digital scholarship tools, methods, and trends.
- Work closely with colleagues in the Library to support topics related to digital scholarship such as open scholarship, open access, open science, digital researcher identifiers, knowledge synthesis, or impact metrics for non-traditional scholarship.
- Provide training to students and faculty in digital scholarship topics, tools, and approaches through workshops, small-group sessions, and embedded project support.
- Support digital scholarship projects where appropriate as an embedded consultant. Focus on supporting students and researchers with training for specific tools and methods used by the Support for project planning, which may include advice on technical infrastructure decisions, tool selection, articulation of project work for grants and job descriptions, and best practices in digital project management.
- Coordinate and disseminate information about digital scholarship on campus and connect scholars across disciplines to facilitate interdisciplinarity.
- Identify and evaluate current and emerging digital tools and methodologies that support the interdisciplinary work of digital scholarship.
- Develop strategies for collaboration, program planning, and support for interdisciplinary digital projects.
- Provide support to library branches as the need arises to develop strategies focused on scholars’ digital production and curation needs.
- Support decision making around software licensing for the Digital Scholarship Lab and virtual lab infrastructure in alignment with needs of digital scholars.
- Provide input on collection development around resources that directly support digital scholarship work (e.g. for text and data mining).
Disciplinary Responsibilities
- Collaborates with faculty to provide service and course-integrated instruction to students; maintains strong relationships with faculty in assigned disciplines.
- Provides research assistance, consultation and support to users in assigned disciplines and across disciplines in the humanities and social sciences.
- Develops materials such as web-based resources, discipline-specific instruction materials, and relevant research data with consideration to different learning styles and varying levels of expertise.
- Participates in program and service development and delivery in Koerner Library.
- Engages in a range of liaison and outreach activities with departments in areas of assigned responsibility and across the UBC campus with other interested departments and individuals.
- Selects materials in all formats and cooperates with other librarians in the selection of materials for the collections. Engages with faculty to identify collection needs. Assists in collections special projects and the development of Proactively assesses the use of the collections, adjusting purchasing activities to align with user needs and interests.
Equity, Diversity and Inclusion
- Works to embed EDI within public services, instruction, collection development and overall professional practice.
- Contributes to the continued development of a library environment and culture that supports and celebrates EDI.
- Supports EDI by pursuing appropriate professional development opportunities and maintains an awareness of EDI initiatives at the departmental, campus, institutional and provincial level such as but not limited to UBC’s Inclusion Action Plan and Indigenous Strategic Plan.
Supervision and Management
- Supervises student employees and may supervise staff.
- Interprets and communicates UBC Library policies and procedures to faculty, staff, and students and keeps up to date on the latest Library policies and procedures.
- Participates on UBC Library teams, working groups, and communities of practice to further the Library’s strategic directions.
- Participates on University or Faculty-level committees.
- May be assigned coordination of services or projects such as reference, teaching and instruction, collections, web presence, subject guides and/or information guides, etc.
Professional Development and Service
- Remain current with research developments and literature in specialization through scanning journal and other professional literature, monitoring electronic sources, and engagement with scholars.
- Keep current with changing professional expectations, services requirements, and developments in academic libraries.
- Accepts responsibility for personal continuing professional education.
- Willingly develops and maintains skills and assumes appropriate leadership relevant to the position.
- Performs other duties as required.
TERMS OF APPOINTMENT AND SALARY
Appointment: This is a full-time, 12 month term appointment with an anticipated start date of 15 November 2024.
The successful candidate will be a member of The University of British Columbia Faculty Association and the terms and conditions of appointment are governed by the Collective Agreement between UBC and the UBC Faculty Association (http://www.hr.ubc.ca/faculty-relations/collective-agreements/).
Eligibility: We are only considering applications from librarians with a maximum of 2 years of professional library experience. However, all internal candidates will be considered regardless of years of experience and are encouraged to apply.
Salary: Starting salary is $83,955 to $86,520 per annum. Actual salary offered will be commensurate with experience and academic/professional qualifications, as well as internal parity. UBC also offers a comprehensive benefits package. Information about salary increases can be found in the Collective Agreement: http://www.hr.ubc.ca/faculty-relations/collective-agreements/
Benefits: Librarians and their dependents are eligible for an extensive benefits package including extended health care coverage, dental coverage, Employee and Family Assistance Program, life insurance, pension and travel benefits. To support families, UBC provides a top-up for eligible employees on maternity or parental leave. Tuition assistance is also available for qualifying employees and dependent children. In addition, librarians/archivists are eligible for professional development funding to support career growth at the university, as well as study leave. Details are available in the Collective Agreement, and for more information see UBC Human Resources: https://hr.ubc.ca/benefits/eligibility- enrolment/employee-groups. Additional information about relocation to UBC Vancouver can be found: https://hr.ubc.ca/working-ubc/housing-and-relocation-services
UBC hires on the basis of merit and is committed to employment equity. All qualified persons are encouraged to apply.
Equity and diversity are essential to academic excellence. An open and diverse community fosters the inclusion of voices that have been underrepresented or discouraged. We encourage applications from members of groups that have been marginalized on any grounds enumerated under the B.C. Human Rights Code, including sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, racialization, disability, political belief, religion, marital or family status, age, and/or status as a First Nation, Metis, Inuit, or Indigenous person.
All qualified candidates are encouraged to apply; however, Canadians and permanent residents will be given priority.
APPLICATION PROCESS
Applications will include: a detailed and current curriculum vitae; and a letter of application that includes a statement of citizenship/immigration status and indicates the candidate’s education, training and work experience in the areas listed above, as well as how did you hear about this opportunity. One consolidated PDF is preferred.
Please visit the UBC careers website to view the full position description and on how to apply. The application deadline will be at 11:59pm on August 31.