Curator of Born Digital Special Collections

The Curator of Born Digital Special Collections is a member of Special Collections and University Archives (SCUA) at Vanderbilt University and is responsible for the active curation, management, and long-term preservation of born-digital and digitized materials within SCUA collections. This position delivers Vanderbilt’s ability to collect, preserve, and provide access to unique contemporary digital materials that are critical to teaching, learning, and research in Vanderbilt that might otherwise be lost.

Reporting to the Associate Director for Digital Special Collections, the Curator collaborates daily with SCUA subject specialists, librarians, faculty, donors, and campus IT colleagues, to acquire, curate, preserve and provide access to born-digital and digitized manuscript collections spanning literature, journalism, politics, music, oral history, medicine, and social activism; the curator collaborates closely with the University Archivist and university administrators to preserve the digital records of Vanderbilt University, including university websites, Board of Trust and Chancellors records.

The Curator will work with SCUA curators, library staff, faculty, and external donors, to acquire, accession, arrange, describe, preserve, and provide access to born-digital materials in a wide range of formats across all SCUA collecting areas. In close collaboration with colleagues in Library Technology and Assessment Services (LTAS) and other library units, the Curator will lead the management, ongoing implementation and use of digital preservation and digital forensics technologies within SCUA, including the further development and management of Vanderbilt University’s web archiving program. The Curator will oversee the long-term preservation and accessibility of Vanderbilt’s growing collection of digital surrogates created through SCUA’s significant investments in digitization for access, including both paper-based and audiovisual collections. In addition, the Curator will contribute to national and international digital preservation initiatives through the library’s participation in the Digital Preservation Coalition alongside organizations such as the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and the Library of Congress.

About the Work Unit:

Special Collections and University Archives are part of the Jean and Alexander Heard Library System. The mission of Special Collections is “to deliver a sustainable legacy of unique cultural heritage by preserving and providing access in perpetuity to Vanderbilt University's impressive collection of rare books, manuscripts, photographs, memorabilia, audio-visual, and institutional archives in our care whatever the format (analog or digital).” 

This involves:

Collaborating with donors and the university to understand and describe the context, the material, and the intellectual content of their collections in whatever form, physical, analogue, online, or digital.

Arranging and describing the collections to enable diverse and inclusive paths to discovery, access, and understanding of the material by scholars and the wider public.

Preserving and stewarding the material and intellectual content of collections through proper conservation, digitization, and digital preservation.

Giving digital and physical access to collections to as wide an audience as possible, given copyright and privacy constraints, online, internationally, and on-site in Vanderbilt.

Key Functions and Expected Performance:

• Identify, evaluate, and acquire born-digital materials for SCUA in collaboration with subject 
• curators, librarians, university administrators, faculty, and donors.
• Develop and maintain policies, standards, procedures, and workflows for the accessioning, processing, description, preservation, and access of born-digital materials within Special Collections and University Archives consulting with SCUA colleagues as needed.
• Collaborate with SCUA colleagues to establish and refine policies, standards, and workflows for the efficient processing, preservation, and long-term management of digitized special collections materials produced both in-house and through external vendors.
• Ensure that digital preservation policies, standards, and workflows align with existing archival practices for physical collections to preserve integrity, authenticity, provenance, and archival bond of hybrid and born-digital collections.
• In partnership with Library Technology and Assessment Services (LTAS), University IT, and other library units, lead the operational implementation and management of digital preservation and access workflows across Vanderbilt Library systems and infrastructure.
• Provide guidance and training to SCUA curators, librarians, and staff to support consistent and effective application of digital preservation standards and practices.
• Collaborate with SCUA colleagues to develop policies, standards, workflows, documentation, and training programs that strengthen digital preservation capacity across SCUA and expand staff competency in digital stewardship practices over time.
• Collaborate with faculty, SCUA colleagues, and library staff to deliver instruction, outreach, and public engagement related to digital preservation, born-digital archives, and SCUA digital collections for Vanderbilt students, researchers, and community audiences.
• Supervise and train student workers to enable digital preservation work in SCUA and throughout the libraries, providing unique experiential learning opportunities in this emerging field of computing, archival science, and librarianship.
• Lead the continued development and management of Vanderbilt University’s web archiving program, to create, preserve, and provide access to high-quality web archives documenting Vanderbilt University, donor organizations, and Nashville and Tennessee communities. 
• Partner with the University Archives team and university administration to support the development and implementation of university digital records management policies and practices, including the preservation of digital and digitized records from the Board of Trust and the Chancellor’s Office.
• Maintain and expand the SCUA digital asset register by identifying at-risk digital materials and developing workflows and procedures to transition those materials into managed preservation environments.
• Apply digital forensics and preservation technologies to acquire, preserve, and provide access to born-digital materials received on legacy physical media, while advancing innovative approaches for the stewardship and use of these collections.
• Work collaboratively with metadata specialists, librarians, Digital Lab staff, IT professionals, and external vendors to explore and implement emerging AI-supported approaches that enhance description, discovery, and access for digitized and born-digital collections.
• Lead SCUA’s annual digital preservation self-assessment using the Digital Preservation Coalition’s Rapid Assessment Model (DPC RAM), working with SCUA staff and institutional partners to use assessment outcomes to guide continuous improvement of the digital preservation program and infrastructure.
• Engage actively with the international digital preservation community by representing Vanderbilt University through participation in professional organizations and consortia, including the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) and the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) Consortium.
• Lead and coordinate Vanderbilt University’s contributions to collaborative digital preservation initiatives, professional working groups, and community-based projects.
• Provide reference, research, and access support for users of born-digital and digitized archival collections.
• Participate in library outreach, communications, and fundraising activities that promote the acquisition, preservation, and use of born-digital special collections.

Supervisory Relationships:

This position does not have direct supervisory responsibility, this position reports administratively and functionally to the Associate Director for Digital Special Collections.

Education and Certifications:

• Master's degree in library and information science (with a specialization in archival work), archival studies, or a related field accredited by the relevant U.S. professional body (e.g., ALA, SAA) or international equivalent is necessary.

Experience and Skills:

• Demonstrated knowledge of the preservation of born digital archival materials, including file formats, metadata, and other digital preservation issues is necessary.
• Demonstrated knowledge of relevant standards and best practices for managing born-digital materials in an archival context (e.g., OAIS, NDSA, DPC RAM, PREMIS, RIC, DACS, and EAD) is necessary.
• Demonstrated knowledge of fundamental digital preservation tools and technologies (e.g., DROID, PRONOM, Bit-Curator, Siegfried, JHOVE, e-pad) is necessary.
• Excellent organizational, analytical, and critical thinking skills are necessary.
• Ability to work independently and as part of a team is necessary.
• Strong commitment to excellent user service is necessary.
• Confidentiality in handling sensitive records is necessary.
• Familiarity with one or more cloud storage and processing environments (e.g., Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud) is strongly preferred.
• Experience with ArchivesSpace for archival or specials collection cataloging is strongly preferred.
• Experience working with born digital collections in an academic library or archive is preferred.
• Familiarity with one or more programming languages (e.g., Python, Ruby) and scripting tools is preferred.
• Experience with digital forensics and/or data recovery is preferred.
• Familiarity with copyright and intellectual property issues related to born digital materials is preferred.
• Working knowledge of intellectual property issues related to archives, libraries, and special collections and copyright issues associated with audio, video, print, and digital technologies is preferred.
• Familiarity with large scale digital preservation systems or platforms (e.g., Preservica, Archivematica, Rosetta, Libnova) is preferred.