Repository Services Manager - University of Chicago

The Center for Digital Scholarship connects the UChicago community to digital resources for research and learning. Our expert staff collaborate with personnel throughout the Library and campus to streamline the exploration of new technology and amplify the scholarly impact of faculty and students. The Dissertation Office supports digital scholarship by facilitating the submission of electronic dissertations and theses.

The Repository Services Manager manages the University of Chicago’s institutional repository (Knowledge@UChicago) and its associated services. Reporting to the Scholarly Communications Librarian, the Repository Services Manager will deliver robust services and technologies to preserve and share the intellectual assets of the University of Chicago by providing researchers, instructors, and administrative staff with a professionally managed digital environment in which to curate, preserve, and disseminate their materials including scholarship, research data, and teaching resources.  The Repository Services Manager is responsible for maintaining a patron-driven approach that ensures the daily operations of Knowledge@UChicago meet the needs of the University community. 

Knowledge@UChicago relies on collaboration with the Research Computing Center and the University’s IT Services Division, and the Repository Services Manager is responsible for maintaining strong working relationships and ensuring flexible and coordinated services and infrastructure that support researchers working with a wide variety of data types, formats, and sizes including big data.  The Repository Services Manager is expected to provide solutions that range from user-friendly, web-based services to API and command line capabilities that support batch processing and integration with researcher’s lab workflows.  

The Repository Services Manager works with the Scholarly Communications Librarian and others across the Library to provide outreach and advocacy for Knowledge@UChicago by raising awareness of IR services across campus, creating opportunities for collaboration, and developing training programs.  This will include developing solutions and documentation that support open access and open data publishing in the repository, creation of data management plans for grant applications, and support for data reproducibility. 

The Repository Services Manager continuously improves the institutional repository and its services by working with stakeholders to identify new use cases and define feature requirements. The Repository Services Manager is expected to maintain a keen awareness of trends in institutional repositories and will pursue opportunities for enhancing repository services through the adoption of new technologies, linked data practices, funded projects, and partnerships.

The successful candidate will use his/her knowledge of project management methodologies to prioritize and address the many tasks associated with supporting digital library collections, scholarly projects, exhibits, faculty publications, student work, multimedia, and scientific data. As needed, the manager will participate in software development projects and will ensure that all code and API documentation is current and accurate. This position reports to the Scholarly Communications Librarian.

Responsibilities

  • Manage daily operations of Knowledge@UChicago, the institutional digital repository, including creating and maintaining new collections and workflows; managing and quality checking deposits and their metadata; and maintaining relationships with vendors and campus partners that provide IR-related technologies or integrations. 
  • Manage a sustainable digital repository technical infrastructure and associated suite of policies and services, that support data management, long-term digital archiving, and appropriate sharing of research, and teaching.
  • Plan and manage projects to support the mission of the institutional repository in collaboration with the Scholarly Communications Librarian.
  • Collaborate with librarians in their outreach work with faculty, graduate students, academic and administrative units, and research centers to enable them to better manage, describe, archive, preserve, make discoverable, and make available their data. 
  • Conduct user needs analysis, product evaluation, selection, customization, testing, implementation, and support.
  • Support access to digital publishing platforms including account creation and setup.
  • Stay current on repository platforms offered on campus.
  • Participate in local, regional, national, and international discussions and initiatives regarding standards, best practices, cooperative data curation, and data life cycle management activities and services. 
  • Has general awareness on matters relating to a specific library section. Collaborates with senior management to develop guidelines, policies, and procedures.
  • Participates in large scale library projects. Consults with management to set goals for the section. Assists with decisions that have an impact on controlling costs, planning, and procedural changes.
  • Performs other related work as needed.

Minimum Qualifications 

Education:

  • Minimum requirements include a college or university degree in related field.

Work Experience:

  • Minimum requirements include knowledge and skills developed through < 2 years of work experience in a related job discipline.

Preferred Qualifications

Education:

  • College or University degree.

Experience:

  • 1-2 years of experience in an academic or library setting.
  • Experience working with digital repository services and systems.

Preferred Competencies

  • Demonstrated experience to plan and manage projects.
  • Demonstrated knowledge of issues and technical challenges related to the management, curation, and archiving of digital data.
  • Knowledge of technologies and techniques for working with APIs and moving and manipulating data.
  • Demonstrated knowledge of metadata concepts and standards, including descriptive metadata, technical metadata and preservation metadata.
  • Excellent oral and written communication skills with a demonstrated ability to produce public-facing materials such as documentation, service pages, presentations, etc.
  • Demonstrated record of success in developing and maintaining strong working relationships with faculty, staff, administrators, or other internal and external partners.
  • Ability to work independently, as well as collaboratively, in a changing environment.
  • Commitment to ongoing professional development.

Application Documents

  • Resume/CV (required)
  • Cover Letter (required)
  • References (3) (required)

When applying, the document(s) MUST be uploaded via the My Experience page, in the section titled Application Documents of the application.

https://uchicago.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/External/job/Chicago-IL/Repository-Services-Manager_JR19864