Manager, Archival Processing and Special Projects at Public Library

Overview
For more than 125 years, The New York Public Library (NYPL) has been an essential provider of books, information, ideas, and education. With collections numbering more than 56 million items and serving more than 16 million patrons in person each year and millions more online, NYPL’s reach is both local and global. Our mission is to inspire lifelong learning, advance knowledge, and strengthen our communities.

At our world-class research centers–including the Humanities and Social Sciences Research Library at the Stephen

A. Schwarzman Building, the Library for the Performing Arts, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture–expert staff facilitate the work of our diverse communities, offering inspiring reading rooms, programs, exhibitions, fellowships, and a dynamic range of research services. Their work is supported by dedicated staff on the Collections and Research Services teams. We are proud to be the most public and widely used research library in the world.

The Special Collections Processing (SCP) department promotes access to the Library’s most distinctive collections by describing and preparing rare and unique materials for discovery and use. Archival Processing (AP) is the team within SCP that supports access to archival collections and their preservation by arranging and describing archives and manuscripts, creating finding aids for research use, managing the Archives Space Staff Interface, accessioning new acquisitions, remediating legacy archival description, and managing archival metadata across systems.

Each year AP arranges and describes over 1,500 linear feet, 6,000 audio and moving image recordings, and 3 terabytes of archival material. The Manager, Archival Processing and Special Projects oversees a team of archivists who process collections from across the Research Libraries.

Some expectations for this role are that within:

1 month , this person will:

• Understand the scope of work in AP and their unique role in contributing to the success of the department.
• Meet with teams across Collections and Research Services and determine the ways in which each collaborates with AP.

3 months , this person will:

• Visit each research center and meet key curatorial partners and other stakeholders.
• Meet with AP’s partners in Digital and participate in work to remediate and migrate legacy description in Archives Space.
• Partner with the Senior Manager to create, assign, and manage processing projects.

6 months and beyond , this person will:

• Work with partners in Digital Collections Operations to support large-scale digitization projects.
• Assist in the management of AP’s Description Remediation Program.
• Support Archives Space users, including troubleshooting, resolving technical issues, and facilitating training.

Responsibilities

• Supervise staff processing new acquisitions and backlog collections, ensuring alignment with national standards and curatorial processing priorities.
• Recruit, hire, and manage processing staff for special projects, managing deliverables and timelines for archival processing grant-funded projects
• Develop and help to maintain documentation for archival processing, Archives Space, and accessioning on AP’s public Git Hub documentation site.
• Conduct training on archival processing and descriptive systems for archivists across NYPL research divisions.
• Maintain archival metadata in all descriptive systems, including Archives Space, Archives Portal, and the Research Catalog, ensuring descriptive content is aligned with national standards.
• Perform database queries and produce reports to inform description remediation priorities in support of data migration projects.
• Represent NYPL in committees, professional organizations,…