Job Description
Purpose of Position:
Northern Kentucky University (NKU) seeks a dynamic, patron-focused, non-tenure track librarian to enhance an established Open Educational Resources (OER) program, work directly with and provide support to faculty to adopt, adapt, and create new resources for their courses, and lead initiatives to enhance the program. As part of the Digital Scholarship and Communication Services team, the OER Librarian will cultivate relationships with students, faculty, and staff, participate in projects that support scholarly communication, copyright/intellectual property, and digital humanities work of the department. Aligning directly with the University’s strategic plan, this position will play a pivotal role in ensuring equitable and high-quality resources are available to support student learning outcomes. Successful candidates will have a strong working knowledge of OERs, open licensing, and open publishing.
The W. Frank Steely Library provides a wide range of library services to support the University’s commitment to its Success by Design strategic framework, which promotes student success by embracing inclusiveness, equity, global awareness, and academic needs of students and faculty in each academic college. Library faculty and staff have enhanced traditional services to better address 21st century information needs and are collaborative partners across campus. The library’s twenty faculty members and fourteen staff members are leading the implementation of NKU’s campus-wide Quality Enhancement Plan on Information Literacy and newly created digital repository, and offering an online Bachelor’s degree in library informatics.
Primary Responsibilities:
· Develops, implements, and assesses new OER initiatives that support the curriculum.
· Based on library and campus needs, leads OER workshops and events (both in-person and virtual) that promote and support the program.
· Provides consistent, collaborative faculty support, including advising on new resources and training on tools used to create and publish OER content.
· Stays current on trends, legislation, best practices, and scholarship that impact OERs.
· Represents the library effectively and professionally at the University and in the local community, both in-person and virtually.
· Delivers and tracks research help services via consultation appointments, email, instant messaging, and walk-up reference desk hours.
· Participates in professional activities such as committee service, conference attendance, continuing education, and staff development.
· Performs other duties as assigned.
Qualifications:
· Master’s degree from an ALA accredited library or information science program or an ALA approved foreign equivalent.
· Experience or coursework related to OER and open-enabled pedagogy.
· Experience or coursework demonstrating familiarity with areas such as author’s rights, scholarly publishing, open access, open licensing, and/or copyright and fair use, including emerging trends in scholarly communications.
· Demonstrated ability to learn new tools and skills to support open scholarship and open education (e.g., OER repositories, search, and publishing tools such as Pressbooks).
· Awareness of accessibility good practices for websites and digital resources.
· Excellent organizational, communication, and multitasking skills.
· Strong interpersonal skills with ability to work successfully in an intentionally collaborative environment with a broad range of people from culturally diverse backgrounds including colleagues, administrators, students, faculty, donors, and alumni.
· Experience with planning and facilitating workshops, community events, or library instruction sessions.
· Experience with or desire to provide research help to a variety of learners/disciplines.
· Demonstrated commitment to equity, diversity, and inclusion.
Any candidate who is offered this position will be required to go through a pre-employment criminal background check as mandated by state law.
The Community
NKU is a public comprehensive university located in the Northern Kentucky/Cincinnati, Ohio metropolitan area. The university delivers innovative, learner-centered education and engages in impactful scholarly and creative activities, all of which empower students for fulfilling careers and meaningful lives while contributing to the social and economic vitality of the region. NKU has almost 14,000 students, over 2,000 faculty and staff. It offers 79 undergraduate degree programs, master’s degrees in 21 disciplines, graduate certificates in 15 areas, two doctoral programs, a law degree, and in a partnership with the University of Kentucky and St. Elizabeth Hospital opened a medical school in the fall of 2019.