Position Overview
Western Kentucky University WKU Libraries invites applications for a tenure-eligible faculty librarian to serve as the Digital Stewardship Librarian within the Department of Library Collections & Discovery. This position plays a critical role in advancing WKU Libraries stewardship of distinctive cultural heritage collections by ensuring their long-term preservation, bridging traditional archiving while transforming them into accessible, discoverable, and usable resources.
Reporting to the Department Chair, the Digital Stewardship Librarian provides leadership across the full lifecycle of collections, including appraisal, accessioning, arrangement, description, preservation, and access. Working collaboratively with colleagues across Collections & Discovery, this position aligns people, workflows, and technologies to create a cohesive preservation-to-access pipeline for born-digital and digitized materials.
Principal Responsibilities
The following duties are customary for this position, but additional responsibilities may be assigned based on institutional needs:
• Oversee and manage digital asset lifecycles, including appraisal, accessioning, metadata creation, digital transfer, ingestion, transfer to preservation repositories, format migration for obsolete media, and ongoing storage monitoring. • Provide intellectual stewardship and curation for Special Collections manuscript holdings by setting processing priorities, coordinating arrangement and description according to professional standards, and directing staff workflows for manuscript processing and digitization. • Advise the Department Chair on collection strategies, including the transfer, arrangement, description, and stewardship of manuscript materials, ensuring that legal, ethical, and technical requirements are met. • Apply professional archival and digital curation standards to develop guidelines, policies, and repeatable workflows that support sustainable stewardship and access. • Recommend, implement, and assess digital forensics tools to support secure capture, evaluation, and when necessary, redaction or access-restriction workflows. • Evaluate and pilot emerging technologies and tools to improve digital preservation management and stewardship practices. • Create and edit finding aids and other digital surrogates in accordance with archival standards and best practices. • Bridge preservation and access by ensuring that stewardship workflows and technologies result in materials that are discoverable, usable, and responsibly accessible to users. • In collaboration with the Senior Cataloging Librarian and the Library Systems Administrator, manage access to digitized and born-digital collections through the librarys discovery platforms. • Coordinate with internal and external stakeholders to support the visibility, promotion, and use of digital collections. • Coordinate digital initiatives by aligning departmental priorities, workflows, and expertise to deliver an integrated and sustainable preservation-to-access pipeline. • Provide training, documentation, and communication through reports, presentations, and hands-on workshops for library faculty and staff on digital stewardship, born-digital processing, and access workflows. • Provide reference assistance to patrons. • Engage in teaching, research, creative activity, and university professional and public service in accordance with departmental criteria for faculty rank and promotion. • Assist with special projects, including but not limited to, inventory, collection maintenance, and related departmental initiatives.
Job Requirements
• Masters degree in Library and Information Science from an ALA-accredited program. • Demonstrated experience working in archives or special collections with digital projects. • Demonstrated ability to work both independently and in a highly collaborative setting, document, and solve problems in a timely manner, and prioritize multiple projects. • Demonstrated proficiency with digital preservation and collection management platforms, such as AtoM, Digital Commons, DSpace, and Alma Digital. • Experience operating digitization equipment, including audio capture hardware, e.g., Sound Blaster, book and flatbed scanners, and cameras used in digital preservation workflows. • Strong communication and collaboration skills with an ability to maintain effective relationships with faculty, staff, students, administrators, and other key stakeholders.
Additional Information
• Faculty rank and salary are commensurate with experience and qualifications and are governed by the tenure and promotion guidelines of the Department of Library Collections & Discovery. • This is a 10-month tenure-eligible faculty appointment with opportunities for promotion in rank. • Kentucky state law requires all public institutions of postsecondary education to conduct pre-employment criminal background checks to determine suitability for employment. • Western Kentucky University WKU is committed to a policy and practice of providing equal employment and educational opportunities to all individuals. In accordance with Title VI and VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 Revised 1992, and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, no form of discrimination or harassment will be tolerated at WKU on the basis of race, color, ethnicity, national origin, creed, religion, political belief, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, expression, marital status, age, uniformed services, veteran status, genetic information, pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions, or physical or mental disability in admission to career and technical education programs and/or activities or employment practices. • Persons with disabilities who need reasonable accommodations to participate in the application and/or selection process should notify the office of Institutional Equity. To request an accommodation, report a complaint, or ask questions regarding WKUs Discrimination and Harassment Policy 0.2040, please contact Ms. Ena Demir, Executive Director, Title IX Coordinator, via email at ena.demir@wku.edu or by phone at 270-745-6867. Ms. Demir is also responsible for coordinating the Universitys response to complaints related to sex and gender harassment. Additional information regarding Title IX is accessible via WKUs https://www.wku.edu/titleix website. Information concerning educational programs offered by WKU are provided at http://www.wku.edu/atwkuacademics.php. For information related to job postings, please email employment@wku.edu.