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Archivist at the Kellen Archives Center - The New School

The Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Archives Center for Parsons The New School for Design, a division of The New School Library, seeks a qualified individual to administer the work of this division.

The Kellen Archives Center collects and preserves archival materials pertaining to the history of art and design with an emphasis on Parsons The New School for Design and its alumni, faculty, and administrators. Founded in 1896 by American Impressionist painter William Merritt Chase, the school was originally focused on the fine arts. The design element was introduced by educator Frank Alvah Parsons in the early 20th century when he established departments devoted to fashion design, interior design, and graphic design. Among the many notables who have attended the school are Edward Hopper, Marc Jacobs, and Donna Karan.

The Kellen Archives Center occupies newly-renovated space in the Sheila Johnson Design Center, a facility that fosters greater collaboration among students and faculty in the design disciplines through exhibitions, programs, installations, and colloquia. The Archivist oversees the collection development, processing, preservation, and use of the collections housed within the Kellen Archives Center.

Responsibilities:

• Oversee collection development in ways that build on existing strengths
• Set priorities and determine appropriate approaches to preparing collections for use
• Develop and implement uniform arrangement and description standards
• Ensure that materials are efficiently, effectively, and appropriately processed
• Encode finding aids using Encoded Archival Description
• Participate in the design and implementation of digital library resources based on archival collections
• Train and supervise processing assistants, including 1 FTE paraprofessional
• Provide reference service for students, faculty, and visiting scholars
• Perform outreach activities as appropriate

Qualification requirements:

• Graduate degree in library science from an ALA-accredited institution, or a graduate degree in archival studies, or the equivalent experience and coursework
• Formal coursework or training in archival management and theory
• Minimum four years of recent archival processing and finding aid preparation experience
• A strong commitment to user-centered processing and description
• Understanding of and commitment to nationally-accepted standards and tools for archival processing and description, including a content standard, the MARC21 format, and appropriate thesauri and authority lists used for indexing archival descriptions
• Experience encoding finding aids using Encoded Archival Description (EAD)
• Demonstrated ability to learn new technologies quickly and effectively
• Demonstrated ability to train and oversee the work of archival processing assistants
• Knowledge of art or design history
• Strong written, verbal and interpersonal communication skills
• Ability to work effectively in a team-based library organization within a culturally diverse academic community

Preferred Qualifications:

• Work experience as a supervisor of archival processing assistants
• Experience developing digital library resources based on archival materials, including digitization of original materials
• Experience working with archival collections in non-textual formats such as photographs, works of art on paper, moving image, and recorded sound.
• Familiarity with basic records management principles and current trends.

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