Scholarly Communications & Data Services Librarian

Lakehead University Library, Thunder Bay Campus, invites applications for a Scholarly Communications & Data Services Librarian. The academic rank of the appointment will be commensurate with the qualifications of the successful candidate. This position will remain open until filled.

About the Library

The total library collection includes approximately 600,000 print volumes and access to over 600,000 e-books, more than 60,000 online journals, and rare and special collections such as the Regional Collection and the Archives. The Chancellor Paterson Library is the main library on the Thunder Bay campus and occupies its own building in the centre of campus. There are four additional libraries: one at the Bora Laskin Faculty of Law, the Learning Commons in Simcoe Hall (Orillia), and the Education Library (one location at the Faculty of Education-Thunder Bay and one at Heritage Place-Orillia). Lakehead University Library is an active member of both provincial and national consortia. We provide many services in collaboration with our Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL) partners, such as, Ask a Librarian (chat reference service), Scholars Portal, and Borealis – Lakehead University Dataverse. The library is also part of Collaborative Futures, a shared next-generation library system at 18 OCUL libraries. Our involvement with the Canadian Research Knowledge Network (CRKN) as well as other consortia, allows us to provide significant digital content. Our staff complement of over 30 includes 11 librarians and an archivist.

About the University

Lakehead University Library’s mission is to be an innovative organization that anticipates the requirements of the future while respecting the heritage of the past. By providing exceptional services, collections, and spaces, the libraries shape the creation of knowledge, actively preserve and support culture, and transform learning and research.

Lakehead is a comprehensive university with a reputation for innovative programs and cutting-edge research. Our campuses are located in Thunder Bay on the traditional lands of the Fort William First Nation, Signatory to the Robinson Superior Treaty of 1850 and in Orillia on the traditional territory of the Anishinaabeg, and Rama First Nation. Lakehead University acknowledges the history that many nations hold in the areas around our campuses and is committed to a relationship with Métis and Inuit and First Nations peoples. Lakehead has approximately 10,000 students and 2,160 faculty and staff. With an emphasis on collaborative learning and independent critical thinking, and a multidisciplinary teaching approach, Lakehead offers a variety of degree and diploma programs at the undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral levels through its nine faculties, including Business Administration, Education, Engineering, Health and Behavioural Sciences, Natural Resources Management, Science and Environmental Studies, Social Sciences and Humanities, Graduate Studies, and Faculty of Law. For further information, please visit: www.lakeheadu.ca .

About the Opportunity

The Scholarly Communications & Data Services Librarian leads Lakehead University’s scholarly communications and data services for the university community. This includes the planning, implementation, and evaluation of innovative, sustainable, and inclusive services and policies that support a wide range of current and emerging topics related to the broad dissemination of university research and data. The librarian oversees the library’s institutional repository (Knowledge Commons, running on DSpace) including metadata management, policies, and harvesting by the library services platform and outside agencies like Libraries and Archives Canada. This position also oversees Lakehead’s Dataverse instance (through Scholars Portal) and represents the library on university groups regarding research data management. The successful candidate will lead the library’s data services, providing support and consultation services to library users on the data resources available through the library and promoting data literacy to students and library staff. Collaboration with librarians, university partners and external groups (like the Digital Research Alliance of Canada and the OCUL Data Community) and liaison responsibilities are important components of this position. Training opportunities and resources will be available to the successful candidate to further develop their skill set for position competencies. The Scholarly Communications & Data Services Librarian reports directly to the University Librarian.

Scholarly Communications & Data Services Responsibilities

• Develop and promote services, policies and best practices to support scholarly communications in such areas as traditional and emerging publishing models and agreements, author rights, open access and metrics.
• Develop services and instructional support for research data management including data management plans, data storage and sharing in appropriate repositories, as well as the discovery, retrieval and use of datasets and statistics, including geospatial data.
• Assist in the implementation of the University’s recently adopted Research Data Management Institutional Strategy.
• Oversee the library’s institutional repository (Knowledge Commons) and data repository (Dataverse), including processes and policies regarding the ingest of content.
• Nurture strong collaborative relationships with partners such as the Research Office and the Faculty of Graduate Studies in order to provide responsive and coordinated services to the University community.
• Coordinate the library’s open access initiatives and promote awareness of open knowledge, open data, research data lifecycle, open educational resources, and other scholarly communications issues.
• Track trends in scholarly publishing, open access, research data management and related technologies and applications.
• Participate in local, regional and national initiatives and meetings related to data and scholarly communications.

Liaison Responsibilities

• Serve as the liaison librarian for the Faculty of Natural Resources Management and the Geography and Geology Departments and provide outreach to their students and faculty.
• Engage in collection development and management, research consultations, instruction, development and maintenance of LibGuides and instructional videos, and other services and support.
• Cultivate partnerships, and actively work towards establishing productive relationships with departmental faculty, staff, adjuncts and visiting professors, and students in order to integrate the library’s resources in curricula and research projects.
• Promote library services and collections through a variety of channels to connect with undergraduates, graduates, faculty, and researchers.

General Responsibilities

• Contribute to the leadership of the library by participating in Librarians’ Council as well as various library and university committees.
• Contribute to research and scholarly activities, professional services, service to the university, and service to the profession and community.
• Participate in the provision of virtual and in-person reference services.

Qualifications

Required
• A graduate degree from an ALA-accredited school of library and information science.
• Knowledge of open access principles and trends in scholarly communication.
• Experience with data set discovery and acquisition, data curation, data repositories, and the development of research data management plans.
• Knowledge of data-intensive quantitative and qualitative research methodologies, research tools and approaches (e.g. computational data analysis, machine learning) across different disciplines.
• Experience working with large data sets and collections using open-source or proprietary data, statistical, or visualization tools (e.g. SPSS, SAAS, Stata, R, OpenRefine, etc.).
• Familiarity with foundational concepts of metadata, data formats, systems for managing and sharing research data, as well as knowledge of FAIR, CARE and OCAP principles.
• Excellent oral and written communication skills.

Preferred
• At least two years of relevant experience in an academic or research library environment.
• Significant work experience in a domain that relies heavily on data acquisition and use.
• Project management skills.

Some evening and weekend work may be required.

For further information, please contact Robin Canuel. Detailed information on the library, our services and resources are available at: https://library.lakeheadu.ca