Scholarly Communications & Data Services Librarian
Scholarly Communications & Data Services Librarian
Lakehead University Library (Thunder Bay Campus) invites applications from dynamic, collaborative, and innovative librarians, with strong leadership potential, for a probationary appointment leading to a continuing appointment as Scholarly Communications & Data Services Librarian.
Lakehead is a comprehensive university with a reputation for innovative programs and cutting-edge research. With campuses located in Thunder Bay and Orillia, Lakehead has approximately 10,000 students and 2,160 faculty and staff. With an emphasis on collaborative learning and independent critical thinking, and a multidisciplinary teaching approach, Lakehead offers a variety of degree and diploma programs at the undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral levels through its ten faculties, including: Business Administration, Education, Engineering, Health and Behavioural Sciences, Natural Resources Management, Science and Environmental Studies, Social Sciences and Humanities, Graduate Studies, the Northern Ontario School of Medicine (West Campus) and the Faculty of Law. For further information, please visit: www.lakeheadu.ca.
The total library collection includes over 700,000 print volumes, access to more than 60,000 online journals and over 120,000 e-books, and rare and special collections such as the Regional Collection and the Archives. The Chancellor Paterson Library is the main library on the Thunder Bay campus and occupies its own building in the centre of campus. There are four additional libraries: one at the Bora Laskin Faculty of Law, the Learning Commons in Simcoe Hall (Orillia), and the Education Library (one location at the Faculty of Education-Thunder Bay and one at Heritage Place-Orillia). Lakehead University Library is an active member of both provincial and national consortia. We provide many services in collaboration with our Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL) partners, such as, Ask a Librarian (Chat Reference Service), Scholars Portal, RACER (Document Delivery) and Dataverse. The library is also part of Collaborative Futures, a project that recently launched a shared next-generation library system at 16 OCUL libraries. Our involvement with the Canadian Research Knowledge Network (CRKN) as well as other consortia, allows us to provide significant digital content. Our staff complement of over 30 includes 12 librarians and an archivist.
Lakehead University Library is currently implementing its Library Plan: Envision the Future 2018-2023. Our mission is to be an innovative organization that anticipates the requirements of the future while respecting the heritage of the past. By providing exceptional services, collections, and spaces, the Libraries shape the creation of knowledge, actively preserve and support culture, and transform learning and research.
About the Opportunity
The Scholarly Communications & Data Services Librarian leads Lakehead University’s scholarly communications and data services for the university community. This includes the planning, implementation, and evaluation of innovative, sustainable, and inclusive services and policies that support a wide range of current and emerging topics related to the broad dissemination of university research and data. The librarian manages the library’s institutional repository (Knowledge Commons, running on DSpace) including metadata management, policies, and harvesting by the library services platform and outside agencies like Libraries and Archives Canada. This position also manages Lakehead’s Dataverse instance (through Scholars Portal) and represents the library on university groups regarding research data management. The successful candidate will lead the library’s data services, providing support and consultation services to library users on the data resources available through the library and promoting data literacy to students and library staff. Collaboration with librarians, university partners and external groups (like Portage and the OCUL Data Community) and liaison responsibilities are important components of this position. Training opportunities and resources will be available to the successful candidate to further develop their skill-set for position competencies. The Scholarly Communications & Data Services Librarian reports directly to the University Librarian.
Scholarly Communications & Data Services Responsibilities
● Develop and promote services, policies and best practices to support scholarly communications in such areas as traditional and emerging publishing models, author rights, open access, bibliometrics/alternative metrics, and research data management including data management plans.
● Develop services and instructional support for data literacy, and the discovery, retrieval and use of datasets including geospatial data and other data-related topics.
● Maintain and manage the library’s institutional repository (Knowledge Commons) and data repository (Dataverse).
● Nurture strong collaborative relationships with partners such as the Research Office and the Faculty of Graduate Studies in order to provide responsive and coordinated services to the University community.
● Coordinate the library’s open access initiatives and promote awareness of open knowledge, data sharing, research data lifecycle and other scholarly communications issues.
● Evaluate and recommend data resources for purchase in collaboration with the Collection Services Librarian.
● Track trends in scholarly publishing, open access, copyright, Creative Commons and other licensing models, new technologies and applications.
● Participate in local, regional and national initiatives and meetings related to data and scholarly communications.
● Promote Open Educational Resources (OER) and provide support to Lakehead faculty wishing to discover, adopt, adapt and/or create OER objects.
Liaison Responsibilities
● Serve as the liaison librarian for assigned departments and provide outreach to students and faculty in those departments.
● Deliver collection development, reference and research assistance, instruction, and other appropriate services and support.
General Responsibilities
● Commit to assessment and evidence-based decision making related to services, collections, technology, and physical spaces.
● Contribute to the leadership of the library by participating in Librarians’ Council as well as various library and university committees.
● Contribute to research and scholarly activities, professional services, service to the university, and service to the profession and community.
● Participate in the provision of virtual and in-person reference services.
Qualifications
Required
● A graduate degree from an ALA-accredited school of library and information science.
- Knowledge of open access principles, trends in scholarly communication, intellectual property and copyright law as it pertains to publishing digital content, acquired through studies or professional experience.
● Experience with data curation, data repositories, data set acquisition and stewardship, and the reuse, reproducibility, and retrieval for data sources.
● Knowledge of data-intensive quantitative and qualitative research methodologies, research tools and approaches (e.g. computational data analysis, machine learning) across different disciplines.
● Experience working with large data sets and collections using open-source or proprietary data, statistical, or visualization tools (e.g. SPSS, SAAS, Stata, R, OpenRefine, etc.).
● Familiarity with foundational concepts of metadata, data formats, and systems for managing and sharing research data.
● Demonstrated experience building and maintaining effective partnerships and collaborations in creative ways in a complex environment.
● Excellent oral and written communication skills.
Preferred
● At least two years of relevant experience in an academic library environment.
● Significant work experience in a domain that relies heavily on data acquisition and use.
● Project management skills.
Some evening and weekend work may be required.
The salary and rank of the appointment will be commensurate with the qualifications and experience of the successful candidate. Lakehead University librarians are members of the Lakehead University Faculty Association and are eligible for sabbatical leave (https://lufa.org/agreement/).
Applicants should submit their electronic application to:
Robin Canuel
University Librarian
Lakehead University
955 Oliver Road – LI5006
Thunder Bay, ON Canada P7B 5E1
Email: applications.library@lakeheadu.ca
To ensure full consideration, applications are to be submitted by June 25, 2021. The electronic application must include a letter of interest and a curriculum vitae (in the form of one PDF document), and the Confirmation of Eligibility to Work in Canada form. The preferred candidate will be required to submit three professional references.
Lakehead University is committed to creating a diverse and inclusive environment and welcomes applications from all qualified individuals including women, racialized persons, indigenous people, persons with disabilities and other equity seeking groups. All qualified candidates are encouraged to apply; however, Canadian citizens and permanent residents will be given priority. This is in accordance with Canadian immigration requirements.
We appreciate your interest; however, only those selected for an interview will be notified. Lakehead University is committed to supporting an accessible environment. Applicants requiring accommodation during the interview process should contact the Office of Human Resources at (807) 343. 8334 or human.resources@lakeheadu.ca to make appropriate arrangements.
This position is subject to final budgetary approval.