Job no: 526085
Work type: Faculty Full Time
Location: UMass Amherst
Department: Library -Admin Services
Union: MSP
Categories: Library, Faculty, Librarian

JOB SUMMARY

The Social and Racial Justice Curator will engage the Robert S. Cox Special Collections and University Archives Research Center (SCUA)’s significant holdings of racial justice-related historical collections. This includes the W. E. B. Du Bois Papers, Horace Mann Bond Papers, Gloria Clark Papers, the Black Feminist Archive, Frankie Ziths Papers (Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army materials), papers and many more. The Curator will be responsible for developing programming around these collections, engaging the UMass community and SCUA’s national audience with the collections and their content, and building on SCUA’s strong foundation of donors, contributors, and community connections. The Social and Racial Justice Curator will be responsible for overseeing the collaborative development, processing, care, and public access of SCUA’s racial justice-related collections, and provide community support in preserving, collecting, and making accessible the history of oppressed and marginalized communities.

MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS (KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS, ABILITIES, EDUCATION, EXPERIENCE, CERTIFICATIONS, LICENSURE)

• Graduate degree in Librarianship, Archives Management, African American Studies, History, Political Economy, or related field.
• Minimum of 2 years of experience working with stakeholders and materials in an archives, cultural heritage, or memory work.
• Experience building relationships with internal and external partners with a strong commitment to public service and proven ability to work effectively with a diverse population of faculty, staff, students, community members, or other stakeholders.
• Demonstrated experience in building public programming, engaging diverse audiences, and increasing accessibility to archival and cultural heritage collections.
• Demonstrated experience conducting outreach to faculty, campus units, student groups, external community, or other relevant groups.
• Evidence of excellent written and oral communication and interpersonal skills including the ability to communicate clearly in presentations and in outreach or advocacy work.
• Familiarity with material history collections management and best practices relating to artifact care, processing, and exhibition.
• Ability to manage time effectively, set performance goals, and work both independently and collaboratively in a flexible, energized, and supportive environment that celebrates a growth mindset.
• Knowledge of archival and other relevant metadata standards.

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS (KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS, ABILITIES, EDUCATION, EXPERIENCE, CERTIFICATIONS, LICENSURE)

• Experience developing collections from or in collaboration with marginalized communities.
• Experience with memory and community care traditions and practices in activist and marginalized communities.
• Experience with archival appraisal, arrangement, and description.
• Grant writing
• Prior experience engaging with the movements and communities reflected in SCUA’s collecting areas.

• Along with SCUA colleagues, serve as an advocate for SCUA’s social change and racial justice collections and as a resource for historically oppressed and marginalized communities through outreach and support.
• Provide reference service to users of collections held by SCUA as required, handling questions directly or referring them as appropriate. Search departmental databases, websites, other finding aids and collections to answer questions by remote and in-person users.
• Partner across SCUA, campus, and in the local and national community to integrate SCUA’s racial justice-related collections in curriculum, class visits, and programming.
• Work with SCUA colleagues to continue to build SCUA’s collections and connections documenting racial justice movements and allied areas of activism.
• Lead developing exhibits, events, and other programming highlighting SCUA’s racial justice and related material.
• Oversee the processing, arrangement, description, digitization, and creation of finding aids and other discovery tools for SCUA’s racial justice-related collections.
• Participate in collecting, maintaining, and analyzing collection usage statistics for monthly reports as needed. Ensure transparency in sharing collection assessment activities to support data-driven decisions.
• Make recommendations on departmental policies, procedures, and acquisitions and participate in departmental planning activities.
• Work closely with the Du Bois Center and other groups in the Libraries, on campus and in the community, to bring our unique resources to a larger and more diverse audience.
• Maintain an active professional presence through publication, presentations at professional meetings, and committee service for professional organizations.
• Supervise student workers who assist with racial justice-related collections.
• Work creatively, collaboratively, and effectively to promote teamwork, diversity, equality, and inclusiveness within the UMass Amherst Libraries and the Campus.
• Develop collegial working relationship with other Five Colleges archivists to facilitate resource and information sharing, develop cooperative projects, and create best practices guidelines as applied to the documentation and memory care practices of oppressed and marginalized communities. Represent the Libraries at Five College Committees, Boston Library Consortium Committees, or other selected professional meetings and conferences as required.
• Serve on internal library committees as needed.
• Perform other related duties as assigned in support of the mission and goals of the Libraries and the department.