Job description
Beacon Archives & Digital Preservation is seeking an Archiving Specialist to join our growing team in Boston. This role focuses on digital preservation, metadata governance, and robust archival workflows to ensure long-term access to critical collections.
As an Archiving Specialist, you will develop and implement workflows for physical and digital archives, create and maintain finding aids, and collaborate with IT and curatorial teams to ensure integrity, accessibility, and compliance.
Key qualifications include experience with archival standards (Dublin Core, EAD, PREMIS, METS) and preservation tools such as Archivematica. The role offers collaborative, mission-driven work with competitive compensation and benefits.
Responsibility
- Develop and implement digital and physical archiving workflows for active and legacy collections.
- Create, enhance, and maintain finding aids, catalogs, and metadata schemas to support discovery.
- Ingest, preserve, and migrate digital assets using preservation tools and ensure integrity with checksums and audits.
- Manage retention schedules, appraisal, and disposition decisions in collaboration with stakeholders.
- Oversee metadata quality control, authority control, and controlled vocabularies; train staff and volunteers.
- Collaborate with IT and data governance teams to implement secure storage, disaster recovery, and access controls.
- Respond to access requests in accordance with privacy and access policies; ensure compliance with legal requirements.
Qualification
- MLS/MLIS or BA in Library/Information Science or equivalent experience with emphasis on archives.
- 2-5 years in archive management, digital preservation, or records management.
- Knowledge of archival standards (Dublin Core, EAD, PREMIS, METS) and finding aids.
- Experience with archival management systems (Archivematica, ArchivesSpace, AtoM, Preservica or similar).
- Strong metadata creation, taxonomy development, and data modeling skills.
- Familiarity with digitization workflows, file formats, checksums, and preservation planning; basic scripting (Python or shell) is a plus.
- Excellent organizational, communication, and project management skills; ability to work with cross-functional teams.
- Privacy/compliance awareness and ability to handle sensitive materials.