Visiting Archivist for African American Collections, Schlesinger Library

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In collaboration with the Harvard Library, The Schlesinger Library is seeking a Visiting Archivist for African American Collections to assist in making collections of underrepresented groups and persons accessible. The Visiting Archivist for African American Collections will participate in Harvard’s Administrative Fellowship Program which seeks to attract talented professionals, and in particular, members of historically underrepresented groups, to promote leadership opportunities and careers in higher education.                                                                                    

In its twenty-sixth year of operation, the Administrative Fellowship Program offers the opportunity to work in an academic environment for twelve months complemented by a career development program. Fellows receive salary and benefits for full time work assignments from September 2016 through August 2017. Fellows also participate in seminars, lectures and case studies designed to enhance leadership and administrative skills, self-assessment and career development.

Harvard Library, through its special collection library, Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, offers an Administrative Fellowship in collaboration with The HistoryMakers’ commitment to provide training to African American archivists and archivists interested in working with African American collections. Since 1999, The HistoryMakers has been recording African American oral histories to refashion a more inclusive record of American history and to educate and enlighten millions worldwide, building the nation’s largest African American video oral history collection. It is the single largest archival collection of its kind in the world designed to promote and celebrate the successes and to document movements, events and organizations that are important to the African American community and to American society.

Description:

The Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library, the preeminent research library on the history of women in the United States, documents women’s lives from the past and present for the future and furthers the Radcliffe Institute's commitment to women, gender, and society. The Schlesinger Library holdings date from the founding of the United States to the present and include more than 3,800 manuscript collections, 100,000s of books and periodicals, and films, photos, and audiovisual material.

The Visiting Archivist will learn about aspects of archives and special collections librarianship beyond manuscript and archival processing, from professionals throughout the Schlesinger Library and across Harvard through a variety of professional development activities.

The Visiting Archivist for African American Collections will:

• Process archival collections, particularly African American collections, in the Schlesinger Library, including literature, history, and the humanities from the nineteenth through the twenty-first centuries
• Prepare finding aids according to established local practice, including encoding in EAD
• Participate in library wide activities such as exhibition preparation, preparing materials for reformatting, etc.
• Catalog photographs and audio-visual materials within collections
• Plan, direct, and review the work of student assistants
• Assist in the preservation assessment of collections and in the selection of materials for conservation treatment
• Assist in the ongoing development of the unit’s processing and cataloging procedures for manuscript and archival collections
• Complete special projects as assigned.

Please note: The application deadline for the Visiting Archivist for African American Collections has been extended to April 15, 2016.

For application materials, please call/write:

Administrative Fellowship Program

Office of the Assistant to the President

for Institutional Diversity & Equity

The Smith Campus Center, Room 935

1350 Massachusetts Avenue

Cambridge, MA 02138

(617) 495-8919; email: [log in to unmask]

or download AFP Application 2015-2016.