Berkeley and Sacramento - California Preservation Program - Digital Preservation Service Assistant

Contract compensation, $20-22/hour, depending on skills and experience; 32-40 hrs/week. Subsequent contracts dependent upon available funding. These positions begin immediately.

If interested, please specify your location of interest (Berkeley, Sacramento, or both) and send resume and cover letter to Pamela Vadakan, Manager, pamelajean@berkeley.edu, 510.642.4665

(Four full-time contract positions, Sacramento and Berkeley, open until filled)

Service Description

In partnership with over 200 libraries, archives and museums (and growing), California Revealed is a multi-year project that provides digitization, preservation, and access services for historic California audiovisual recordings, books, documents, photographs and ephemera that tell the incredible stories of the Golden State.

The California Preservation Program gathers best archival practices for digital preservation and establishes low-cost, practical standards to help organizations digitize and manage their collections. Access is provided by the Internet Archive for teaching, research and study. In addition, records are shared via Calisphere, WorldCat, the Digital Public Library of America, and the Home Movie Registry. Storage of files for long-term preservation is provided by the California Preservation Program.

This service largely is grant-funded by the California State Library. Project operations currently are moving from the UC Berkeley Library to the California State Library. There are four Digital Preservation Assistant positions available: two positions are located at the California State Library with contracts until August 2018 (plus continuation for additional years, pending available funding), and two positions are located at the UC Berkeley Library with contracts until June 2018 (and an opportunity to relocate to the State Library for additional contracts, if interested). 

Position Description 

The Digital Preservation Assistant will undertake the following activities:

·         Prepare collection materials for digitization.

·         Normalize metadata in an Islandora content management system.

·         Pack materials for shipping to digitization vendors.

·         Communicate with vendors and partner archives.

·         Perform quality assurance and control of new digital preservation files and metadata records.

·         Upload access files to the Internet Archive.

·         Upload, map and aggregate metadata. Sync with WorldCat and other catalogs.

·         Assist with development of digital preservation outreach workshops.

Required Capabilities and Experience

·         Experience with handling and preservation of archival materials, including manuscripts, photographs, and audiovisual materials.

·         Experience with quality assurance and control procedures for digitized archival materials, including manuscripts, photographs, and audiovisual materials.

·         Working knowledge of library and archives preservation principles, including digitization and metadata standards for long-term preservation and access.

·         Familiarity with standards such as PBCore, Dublin Core, MODS, Encoded Archival Description, and various thesauri for cataloging.

·         Ability to work creatively, collaboratively, and effectively both as a team member and independently.

·         Writing skills to document procedures.

·         Ability to lift up to 50 pounds.

·         Basic competence with office applications in Microsoft and Mac environments.

Preferred Capabilities and Experience

·         Interest in California history.

·         Experience and facility with Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Premiere Pro, and Wavelab Elements (for quality control), and Islandora (the project’s content management system).