Head of Open and Digital Scholarship Services, UT Libraries

Purpose: The Head of Open and Digital Scholarship Services (ODSS) leads the ODSS Team in support of evolving campus research needs around scholarly communication and digital scholarship services. The team’s portfolio of services includes open access, copyright, repositories, open educational resources, and digital scholarship. This portfolio includes oversight for the Scholars Lab, UTL’s digital scholarship center, which provides researchers with infrastructure, access to subject librarian and domain-situated expertise, and opportunities for learning, collaboration, and presentation. Within the Scholars Lab, the ODSS Team supports campus research and digital scholarship needs and collaborates with other teams to provide related services around open scholarship, research data, the digital humanities, and other evolving aspects of research support.

UT Libraries welcomes applicants for this position who have experience with scholarly communication services or digital scholarship. Specific duties for consultation and teaching support will be assigned based on the skills and experience of the successful candidate for this role. Candidates with expertise in scholarly communication may have experience with open access, copyright, digital publishing, and/or repositories.  UT Libraries defines digital scholarship broadly to encompass research needs across the disciplines including the digital humanities, emerging technology, and collections as data.

Responsibilities

• Provide strategic direction for the ODSS Team’s outreach efforts, services, and assessment in support of researcher needs around scholarly communication and digital scholarship. Develop strategic relationships with people and units on campus to advance library initiatives. Supervise 4 full time staff and occasional student workers.
• Provide Scholars Lab oversight, support, and assessment-informed enhancement. Provide strategic direction for the Scholars Lab initiative, build and maintain campus partnerships, and develop a sustainable service model. Collaborate with UTL colleagues to offer services in the Scholars Lab around open scholarship, research data services, digital humanities, and other evolving research needs. Leads the Scholars Lab Fellowship program. 
• Provide training and consultation services to researchers and students who are incorporating digital tools and methods in their research and classroom instruction. Specific areas of support may include Texas ScholarWorks (TSW), OA, copyright, author rights, trends in publishing or digital scholarship tools as methods.
• Oversight for UTL repositories and digital scholarship tools. Including monitoring and evaluating existing and emerging digital tools and related technologies. Develops policies for and advises on issues related to Texas ScholarsWorks and other UTL hosted platforms and tools.
• Participates in or leads library and university, regional, and national committees, task forces, and special projects. Engages in ongoing professional development and scholarship through attending and presenting at conferences and workshops. 
• Other related functions as assigned. 

Required Qualifications

• Master’s degree in library science or equivalent, with four or more years of relevant experience. A degree in a relevant field or a combination of education plus experience in a field with transferable skills may be substituted as appropriate.
• Domain expertise in digital scholarship and/or in scholarly communication which may include: digital collections/archives, project management, natural language processing/text analysis, visualization, network analysis, and/or collections as data (digitization, OCR, metadata, transcription, etc.), open publishing, copyright, and/or repositories.
• Supervisory experience.
• Excellent interpersonal skills, a professional, team-oriented attitude, and the ability to establish positive and productive collaborations,
• Ability to communicate effectively, in person and in writing, including a demonstrated facility in conveying technical concepts to non-technical audiences.
• Enthusiasm for continual learning and professional development.
• Experience leading/managing projects or groups in a fast-paced, evolving work environment.

Relevant education and experience may be substituted as appropriate.

Preferred Qualifications

• Familiarity with one or more programming languages like Python, R, or JavaScript.
• Experience providing effective leadership in an academic library or similar setting.
• Experience managing a library space.
• Experience with library instruction, consultation, or reference services.
• Experience with Open Journal Systems and/or DSpace

We want to emphasize that the preferred qualifications are not required and that we are committed to helping our future colleagues develop these preferred skills.

Working Conditions

• May work around standard office conditions.
• Repetitive use of a keyboard at a workstation.
• Typical library conditions.

Work Shift: Between the hours of 7am and 6pm, Monday – Friday, as arranged with manager.