Director Bancroft Library and Associate University Librarian

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The University of California, Berkeley (Berkeley), one of the world's premier institutions of higher education, invites both nominations and applications for the position of Director of The Bancroft Library and Associate University Librarian (AUL) for Special Collections. Bancroft's world-renowned special collections are among the largest and most actively used in the nation, providing a tremendous opportunity for the right visionary academic leader.

This position is a non-senate academic appointment. A joint appointment with other UC Berkeley departments will also be considered.

• Lead Bancroft as its public leader, sharing its story, stewarding philanthropic support, and fostering a culture of collegiality, collaboration, and shared goals.
• As AUL, provide strategic academic leadership across all Library special collections, working closely with other Library leadership to identify opportunities for innovations, efficiencies, shared services, and renewed partnership.
• Interact with scholars at Berkeley and internationally, engaging in passionate content discourse with researchers, preferably with a research background in one of The Bancroft Library's major collecting areas.
• Be an integral member of a tightly integrated, collaborative team that collectively supports the University Library's strategic vision, and promote continuous professional growth and learning at all staff levels.

The Bancroft Library welcomes patrons from Berkeley and the world, serving as one of the most heavily used academic rare book and special collections libraries in the country. Bancroft staff annually teach sessions and full courses for 3,000 plus students, support about 5,000 patrons in its reading rooms, and tens of thousands of visitors online. Founded in 1905, Bancroft's core holdings include The Bancroft Collection of Western Americana, Latin Americana, the Pictorial Collection, the Rare Books and Literary Manuscripts Collection, the History of Science and Technology Collection, and University Archives.

Over the past 50 years, Bancroft's academic research groups, including the Mark Twain Papers & Project, the Oral History Center, and the Center for the Tebtunis Papyri, have earned Bancroft international acclaim. With about 60 career staff/library professionals and as many student employees, Bancroft supports world-class research both directly in its own units, and through engagement and collaboration with scholars at Berkeley and across the globe.

The Bancroft Library continues to vigorously build its physical collections, spending about $1.5 million annually on new acquisitions and receiving gifts-in-kind of comparable value. Bancroft stewards nearly 400 million physical items (volumes, archival materials and pictorial items, maps, microforms, etc.) and, over the past 25 years, has built one of the largest digital special collections in the University of California system.

In addition to its stewardship of analog and digitized collection holdings, Bancroft is building a robust program for securing and processing born-digital archives. Bancroft and the other University Library special collections have been leaders in enhancing access to archival treasures in the age of digitized and networked information. Continuing digitization of its enormous special collections is a primary focus of the University Library's Digital Lifecycle Program, which currently adds about 1.5 million newly digitized files to its online collections annually.

As with many cultural heritage and information resource organizations in higher education, Bancroft and other University Library special collections are simultaneously blessed by growing demand for existing and new services, and challenged by declining public investment in their operations. Fortunately, Bancroft is supported with the advice and philanthropy of the Friends of The Bancroft Library, a California nonprofit that is external to the University, as well as strong philanthropic support from many loyal donors.

The University Library has recently invested in expanding its fundraising team, with notable success, and the groundwork has been laid for even more growth in the coming years.

The University Library comprises 24 campus libraries, general and subject libraries, with shared service units that support business functions, such as finance, development, digitization, and communications. The University Library has a collection of over 13 million circulating volumes, including almost 1.5 million ebooks, and subscriptions to over 130,000 journals and periodicals. The University Library manages close to 10 million files (200 TB) in digital holdings of special collections materials and has contributed over 3 million digitized books from our…