Colleagues,
I've been asked to forward the following job announcement to members of this listserv. Please direct any questions about the position to Eric Grafman <[log in to unmask]>.
Many thanks,
Constance Malpas
Digital Initiatives Coordinator
The New York Academy of Medicine
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is looking for
a full-time contract employee to assume the role of Archivist.
Below I've included a brief description of the PHIL contents,
as well as what the Archivist position will require from the person
who'll fill such a role. I'm taking a proactive approach to the search
process, focusing in on established, medically oriented archives as
a start. Please feel free to disseminate this document to whomever
you feel might qualify for such a position. Quite sincerely, any help
in this matter would be greatly appreciated.
The CDC's photographic, A/V, and illustrative archive is primarily made
up of biologically and medically oriented materials, including
all aspects of the public health industry. The data formats include
audio/visual data in the form of analog tapes and film reels, hard copy prints,
35mm slides, digital graphics files, textual documents, sound files,
computer animations, and 3D models. The PHIL, already on-line as you know,
will be upgraded to contain all that is organized by the Archivist, and will
be governed by a versatile asset management system.
What will be required or desired with regards to a candidate's experiential and
core competencies will be the following.
A Masters Degree will be required, as well as having worked with large
catalogs of data, constructing, and managing these asset repositories.
Constructing may be construed as creating from scratch, a taxonomic tree or
skeleton into which was placed the assets in a hierarchical order, as well
as having populated the repository's metadata schema with metadata that was
pertinent to each respective asset, thereby, facilitating end-user search criteria.
Required also, will be the candidate's ability to communicate well in
both a written and verbal manner, and be facile in communicating in general
lay terminology, as well as high level technical terminology. Much in the way
of discussions pertaining to computer-based archiving, public health, and medicine
will take place, for a majority of the holdings fall with these subject headings.
It would be highly desirable if such a candidate had in the past used
computer-based methods for archiving digital assets, and therefore, understands
the problems associated with such archiving modalities not only from the standpoint
of an archivist, but an end-user as well. I'd like to include the use of computer-
aided image editing such as Photoshop when speaking of "computer-based" archiving,
for cleaning and enhancing imagery plays a large role in the archiving process.
An understanding of Graphical User Interface, GUI, usability would also be very
important in an archivist's background, for the PHIL is a web-based product, and
is continuously being refined based on an end-user's experience, i.e. Q/A input.
Finally, it would be desirable, though not required that the archivist candidate
be acquainted with terminology from the fields of medicine, public health, and the
biological sciences. A very large percentage of our content is from these scientific
domains, and it would merely make it that much easier to create, and maintain such
a catalog, along with implementing appropriate taxonomic metadata.
However, the most important factor is the candidate's ability to create from scratch,
a large, complex repository, as well as the appropriate metadata fields that will accompany
each asset.
I hope that this helps you in providing to me in your reply, an explanation as to
the ways in which your background would enable you to be an effective archivist here
in the PHIL.
I look forward to reading your reply very soon.
Sincerely,
Eric Grafman, PHIL Project Lead
(404) 639-1747
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