Job Opening Title: Advising Archivist
Employer Name: MHz Curationist, a project of the MHz Foundation
Job Location: Remote
Application Deadline: April 24th, 2020
Salary Range:
Link to job posting: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ii92ZVUhhXlxq50_Ftu79R0d7L8T8xf6_BjEiaOGqZc/edit
Years of experience required: +/- 5 Years
Job Description (if URL to posting not available). Please include instructions for how to apply.: RFP: Structured Metadata Standards & (Scalable) Taxonomy Datasets for Curationist.org
Date April 17, 2020
CONTEXT SUMMARY
As an online curation platform of open access art and cultural heritage content, Curationist imagines an online space where cultures meet, differences are celebrated, and people collaborate to build collective knowledge.
Currently, Curationist is a manually culled and searchable WordPress database of hot linked open access and Creative Commons art and culture content from around the world. The content is curated by a small team of moonlighting freelance contributors who are cultural producers from various fields, experience levels, and cultural backgrounds.
In 2020, we plan to expand the project into an ecosystem for sharing art and culture in dialog with others. Eventually, this emergent archive will evolve to be a free knowledge hub full of high quality community curated and generated digital content and editorial materials. The beta site is currently in a re-design phase to become more useful, intentional, and entertaining. Enriching, but not academic. Fun and trustworthy.
PROJECT GOALS
We want to be a valuable, discoverable, and verifiable source of global art and cultures via anti-colonial, anti-racist, feminist, and queer practices that deliver great art and culture, not as a static authority, but as an emergent collective.
Having spent a year gaining a strong understanding of content available, obstacles in our current technology, and getting aspirational metrics in place, we are preparing to launch into clear-eyed archive building. It is critical that the technical, content, and communications teams are aligned around standardization of metadata and taxonomy datasets that are flexible enough to expand beyond hegemonic norms to include a plurality of classifications, and is structured enough to stand up to dominant culture.
Our goal is to establish two founding documents: a Structured Metadata Standard that we can implement as we pull from open access API sources and (Scalable) Taxonomy Datasets that apply our values of cultural diversity and dynamism while making our materials discoverable through our advanced search tool as well as general SEO. Both of these documents will set clear, intentional, intuitive, and efficient frameworks that will help us with our mission to increase access to art and cultural heritage and expand cultural awareness.
In order to accomplish our goals, the team requires an Advising Archivist to create clearly defined in-house Structured Metadata Standards & (Scalable) Taxonomy Datasets that can be based around existing best practices with room to evolve alongside the project and culture-at-large. We prefer to use a standard (or reference multiple standards) available through a Creative Commons license (if possible) as part of our ethos to participate in the free knowledge movement top to bottom.
PROJECT SCOPE
In collaboration with the Content Curation Director, in conversation with the Technical Project Manager, and with logistical support from the Content Curation Coordinator, the Advising Archivist will establish Metadata Standard & (Scalable) Taxonomy Dataset (CC BY-SA 4.0). These documents will determine and provide guidance on:
which cultural heritage standard(s) we will adopt as a baseline and why with a strong preference for free knowledge sources
how we will adopt as we forefront knowledges not yet at the center
additional standards that are needed to ensure alignment on the anti-colonial, intersectional feminist, queer, and anti-racist thought we espouse
outline a protocol for an evolution of Standards & Datasets so we can remain flexible for lexicon expansion and future planning towards multilingualism and international text layout and typography
Additionally, the Advising Archivist may discover further lines of inquiry to be considered for future development under this or a separate agreement.
TIMELINE
May: Research & Discovery
June: Delivery of a first draft Metadata Standard & (Scalable) Taxonomy Dataset
July: Final draft
Thank you for taking time to consider helping us advance this project from a pragmatic critical archival studies perspective. We hope to hear from you soon. Proposals will be reviewed until April 24th, 2020. Please send them to Virginia Poundstone, Content Curation Director, virginia@mhzfoundation.org
WE ARE LOOKING FOR SOMEONE WHO
Approaches Art History, Cultural Heritage and Cultural Theory through social justice frameworks
Excels in the art and maintenance of Archiving practices
Is a thought leader in the field with a desire to contribute to the free knowledge movement and help it move beyond its Euro-American centrism
Is experienced and/or comfortable navigating the nuance of anti-colonial ethos within the colonial practice of collecting, archiving,
PREFERRED EXPERIENCE
+/- 5 years of experience as an archivist, registrar, librarian, data scientist, or similar
Multi-lingual
Translation & Translation technology
Peer review and/or collaborative authoring
Technical writing for archives
APPRECIATED EXPERIENCE
Familiarity with Getty Vocabularies (and the critiques of)
Familiarity with Wikidata (linked open data)
Familiarity with Asia Art Archive’s Datasets
Familiarity with Artsy’s Art Genome Project
Familiarity with international text layout and typography
Comfortability with communication through Slack
Proficiency with Google Docs and Google Drive
Proficiency in WordPress or similar CMS
Proficiency with SEO strategies
Archives Gig 