Digital Archivist

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Reporting to the Associate Director, Information and Archives, the Digital Archivist plays a strategic role in advancing the University’s digital preservation capabilities. The incumbent ensures the integrated management of born-digital and digitized archival materials and leads initiatives to implement sustainable access to the digital archives and a digital preservation strategy. This includes assessing institutional needs, developing workflows, acquiring tools, and providing expert guidance on digital access and digital preservation standards and practices. They are also responsible for the migration of archival material on legacy media to digital formats and the development of digitization initiatives to enhance access to the collection.

In this role, your responsibilities will include:

• Digital Preservation & Systems: Establish and maintain archival preservation systems to enable long-term storage and access to the University’s digital assets. Provide expert reference and research services for born-digital and digitized holdings, including locating sources, answering questions, making on-demand digital reproductions, and responding to related information requests. Lead University Web Archiving initiatives as required. Develop legacy media migration guidelines and establish a migration program to ensure sustainable format transitions.
• Development of standards-based practices: Develop and document standards-based practices (OAIS, international standards) to establish a compliant framework for acquiring, arranging, describing, preserving and making accessible born-digital material.
• Acquisition: Evaluate acquisitions to determine archival value, technical feasibility, preservation needs, and strategic alignment and established priorities.
• Metadata & Description: Create and maintain standards-aligned metadata to facilitate collection discovery and outreach.
• Reference, Access & Rights: Provide expert research services to support instituitional,  scholarly and community engagement with holdings. Document access conditions to ensure transparent rights management and legal compliance. Implement archival management software to enable efficient user access and discovery.
• Institutional Support & Guidance: Advise stakeholders on digital records management to embed preservation best practices University-wide. Provide training as required to  staff to build organizational capacity for digital preservation. Prepare reports and proposals to inform resource allocation and strategic decisions. Support partnerships across the University to promote awareness and adoption of digital preservation practices.
• Engagement & Outreach: Facilitate instructional sessions, workshops, and exhibitions to maximize collection visibility and use. Support cross-university partnerships to advance institutional adoption of preservation practices
• Donor Relations: Coordinate and lliaise with donors, records creators, archival staff, and technical staff to coordinate born-digital transfers, documentation, transfer methods, and preservation actions.

What you will bring:

• Graduate degree in Archival Studies, Library and Information Studies, or a related field.

• Minimum of three years of experience in an archival or records management setting, including experience working with born-digital materials.

• Bilingualism (French and English), oral and written expression
• Theoretical and practical knowledge of archival functions, including appraisal, acquisition, preservation, arrangement and description, reference, access, and outreach.

• Knowledge of archival descriptive, metadata, and data structure standards, including RAD, ISAD(G), Dublin Core, EAD, MODS, METS, and PREMIS.

• Knowledge of digital preservation standards and frameworks, including OAIS and Trustworthy Digital Repositories.

• Experience with digital preservation and born-digital processing tools such as Archivematica, BitCurator, Exactly, ePADD, or comparable tools.

• Knowledge of storage media, file systems, software environments, and file formats relevant to born-digital acquisition, transfer, preservation, and access.

• Knowledge of Linux and command-line interfaces, or willingness to learn; familiarity with scripting languages such as Python is an asset.

• Experience with digital repository, archival management, or digital asset management systems.

• Ability to analyze records and apply rules, policies, and legislation related to acquisition, selection, access, privacy, copyright, and archival use.

• Familiarity with emerging technologies, including AI applications in archival processing, description, access, and preservation.

• Strong analytical, problem-solving, planning, and organizational skills, including the ability to work under pressure with minimal supervision.

• Ability to collaborate effectively with technical, archival, and institutional stakeholders.

• Ability to deliver training, workshops, documentation, and guidance for staff, researchers, and University stakeholders.

*This position may be subject to a telework agreement.

#LI-Hybrid

Key Competencies at uOttawa:
Here are the required competencies for all or our employees at uOttawa: 
Planning: Organize in time a series of actions or events in order to realize an objective or a project. Plan and organize own work and priorities in regular daily activities.
Initiative: Demonstrate creativity and initiative to suggest improvements and encourage positive results. Is proactive and self-starting. Show availability and willingness to go above and beyond whenever it is possible.
Client Service Orientation: Help or serve others to meet their needs. This implies anticipating and identifying the needs of internal and external clients and finding solutions on how to meet them.
Teamwork and Cooperation: Cooperate and work well with other members of the team to reach common goal(s). Accept and give constructive feedback. Able to adjust own behaviour to reach the goals of the team.
The University of Ottawa embraces diversity and inclusion in the workplace. We are passionate about our people and committed to employment equity. We foster a culture of respect, teamwork and inclusion, where collaboration, innovation, and creativity fuel our quest for research and teaching excellence. While all qualified persons are invited to apply, we welcome applications from qualified Indigenous persons, racialized persons, persons with disabilities, women and LGBTQIA2S+ persons. The University is committed to creating and maintaining an accessible, barrier-free work environment. The University is also committed to working with applicants with disabilities requesting accommodation during the recruitment, assessment and selection processes. Applicants with disabilities may contact [email protected] to communicate the accommodation need. All qualified candidates are encouraged to apply; however, Canadians and permanent residents will be given priority.
Note: if this is a union position: The hiring process will be governed by the current collective agreement related to the union affiliation noted above; you can click here to find out more.
If this is a front-line position with responsibilities to interact with students, selected candidates must be rated at the Low Advanced proficiency level or higher for both oral comprehension and reading comprehension in their second official language. The rating is determined by a proficiency test designed by the Official Languages and Bilingualism Institute.

Prior to May 1, 2022, the University required all students, faculty, staff, and visitors (including contractors) to be fully vaccinated against Covid-19 as defined in Policy 129 – Covid-19 Vaccination. This policy was suspended effective May 1, 2022 but may be reinstated at any point in the future depending on public health guidelines and the recommendations of experts.