Special Collections Assistant

Job Title: Special Collections Assistant

Reports To: Special Collections Librarian

Augustana’s Special Collections, located within the Thomas Tredway Library, collects, preserves, and provides access to the college’s rare books and unique archival materials. The special collections assistant—by participating in the provision of researcher services, management of collections, and mentoring of student employees—forms a key support to the department’s mission of providing active, engaged learning opportunities for students; facilitating original research by students, faculty, staff, and outside researchers;

and conducting community outreach on campus and in the Quad Cities area. The assistant’s job duties are carried out under the supervision of the special collections librarian, but with a high degree of accountability and the autonomy to work independently.

• Works collaboratively with the special collections librarian on departmental planning and projects.
• Provides reference and in-depth research assistance to Augustana students, faculty members, administrative offices, alumni, and members of the public in person or by telephone, email, and/or traditional mail.
• Mentors and instructs student employees working on projects involving digitization, outreach programming, preservation, collection development, reference, and retrieval/shelving.
• Supports the department’s teaching and learning efforts by preparing materials for classroom use and serving as a liaison for course-related reference inquiries.
• Shares responsibility for overseeing the reading room, including scheduling researcher appointments, ensuring policies and procedures are enforced, retrieving collection materials, maintaining statistics for annual reporting, assisting students and patrons with physical and electronic resources, and staffing the reading room desk in the absence of student employees.
• Manages the fulfillment of reproduction requests and routes publication permission requests and donation inquiries to the special collections librarian.