Position: Documentation and Archives Director
Status: Full Time, Exempt
Location: Remote (occasional travel required)
Pay Scale: $80,000-$85,000
POSITION SUMMARY
The Documentation and Archives Director leads all aspects of TAVP’s documentation and archival mission, including management, development, security, processing, maintenance, and public activation of stories and records. The Documentation and Archives Director is also responsible for overseeing strategy, administration, financial, communication, and outreach related to archival work. This position ensures that all work related to these aspects of TAVP’s mission meet the organization’s evolving ethical standards and commitment to community, care, and safety. The Documentation and Archives Director is responsible for maintaining and growing TAVP’s status as a leader in community archives, abolition, and transformative justice.
The Documentation and Archives Director reports to the Associate Director of TAVP, Hannah Whelan.
POSITION RESPONSIBILITIES
Archival Management & Development
- Supervise the TAVP Community Archives Manager and TAVP archival interns
- Oversee all aspects of digital and physical archiving, including storage, file conversion, metadata creation, description, and organization
- Ensure TAVP’S physical and digital archival practices are in alignment with fair, ethical, reciprocal, community-informed documentation, preservation, and activation.
- Oversee the redesign of TAVP’s After Violence Archive, with emphasis paid to co-design and community input
- Oversee the processing of materials/interviews in the TAVP backlog and create a plan for backlog reduction
- Assist interviewees and other record creators to release/donate their materials into TAVP’s public archives; ensure and track anonymity or removal of archival submissions when requested
- Manage institutional partnerships with universities, including regular communication, updating MOUs, etc.
- Manage all aspects of partner collections, ensuring reciprocity and alignment with TAVP values
- Stay up to date on new thinking, writing, developments, and trends related to archives, community archives, public history, liberatory memory work, and related fields. Share with the team and apply to TAVP work and mission
- Coordinate internships, capstones, etc. with graduate students in archives and information studies programs (e.g. UT and UCLA iSchool graduate students), as well as with anyone who is interested in learning more about community archives
- Create and Maintain documentation of all archival activities and save documentation in designated folders in organizational files (i.e. Google Suite, Dropbox, etc)
- Provide quarterly progress reports on all archival activities to the Executive Director
Archival Preservation & Security
- Develop and implement a plan for autonomous long-term digital preservation of TAVP’s archival collection, and update the plan regularly as needed; Oversee the backup of TAVP’s digital archive
- Manage the physical preservation and organization of TAVP’s physical archive
- Cultivate equitable institutional partnerships when useful for archival sustainability
- Analyze and mitigate security risks related to the archive, including surveillance and subpoena risk
Archival Activation
- Develop, implement, and update a plan for public use of digital materials
- Work with artists and writers in residence, allies, activists, organizers, and researchers to utilize the collection
- Coordinate with partners and collaborators who are using the collection, and stay in contact with individuals who have contributed their materials (interviews, artwork, etc) to the archive to implement their wishes for description and access
- Create online learning and multimedia content
- Develop workshops, online learning tools, and multimedia content based on materials in the TAVP archival collection
- Conceptualize and coordinate the creation of public resources related to archival materials
- Manage and update archival permissions and restrictions policies, with an emphasis paid to co-design and community input
- Work closely with the Development Director and Communications Coordinator to identify stories and other archival materials to publicly highlight as part of broader communications outreach/strategy
- Regularly provide updates for website and social media related to TAVP’s archival mission and archival collection
- Develop public programming updates with information on the archival collection
- Track public use of the archive
- Contribute publicly accessible written pieces on TAVP’s archival work
Archival Project Management
- Manage special projects related to all aspects of TAVP’s Documentation and Archives work
- Convene stakeholders and advisors on projects as needed
- Develop standards for special projects, e.g. ethical and participatory decision-making, public use of records, etc.
- Ensure projects get completed on time and on budget
Development & Fundraising
- Work with the Executive Director and Development Director to identify needs related to TAVP’s archival work for grant requests, fundraising campaigns, etc.
- Assist with organizational fundraising efforts, including participating in fundraising planning and strategizing, attending meetings with TAVP’s fundraising consultant(s), being responsive to requests from fundraising consultant(s), and interfacing with current and prospective donors (including emails, phone calls, and in-person meetings)
- In collaboration with staff across the organization, create content for earned income trainings and participate in earned income consulting projects, including advising partners (such as universities and other non-profits).
Financial
- Work with TAVP financial team to track project-level budgets and expenditures related to TAVP’s documentation and archival work to ensure they do not exceed designated budgeted amounts.
General Administrative
Because TAVP is a small organization, all employees are expected to contribute to administrative duties. The Documentation and Archives Director will be required to:
- Manage archive@ email account
- Make minor website updates as needed
- Use organizational tools, including Slack, DonorBox, Salesforce, Google Analytics, etc accordingly
- Facilitate TAVP weekly team meetings on a rotating basis
Required Qualifications and Experience
- We recognize there are a variety of ways to gain knowledge and experience beyond formal education. A college degree is NOT required for this position.
- Knowledge of advocacy and archival landscapes related to criminal justice reform, community-based documentation/archiving, abolition, and transformative justice
- Minimum 3-5 years of experience working with a range of archival materials
- Experience working with metadata structures & content standards including Dublin Core
- Experience working with encoding, serialization formats, and programming languages, or a commitment to attending externally-hosted trainings upon position start date
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills with proven experience in crafting collection and project descriptions, correspondence with archival donors and researchers, social media content, and other materials
- Strong skills as both a self-starter and team player
- Strong organizational skills, with the ability to independently prioritize daily tasks and meet competing deadlines
- Strong leadership qualities with an interest in growing with the organization
Expectations of all TAVP Staff
- Commitment to TAVP’s values of restorative and transformative justice in all aspects of our work and mission
- Commitment to social, racial, economic, and gender justice
- Commitment to treating all people directly impacted by state violence with understanding, compassion, and without judgment
- Contribute to an inclusive, welcoming, and respectful work environment
- Occasional evening and weekend work
Compensation and Benefits
Salary is based on experience. TAVP offers the following employee benefits:
- Flexible remote work
- 100% employer-covered health, dental, and vision coverage
- Monthly Team Wellness Day (12 days in 2024)
- Holidays (29 days in 2024)
- Including a two-week summer break and a two-week winter break
- Vacation (20 days)
- Sick Time Off (10 days)
- Personal Days (6 days)
- Cell phone and wifi stipend ($90/month)
- 401 (k) Plan (with up to 4% employer match after 12 months of employment)
- 100 percent paid family leave for up to 12 weeks after 6 months of employment
- Laptop computer and accessories
Location
TAVP does not currently require employees to work in-person in TAVP’s office (located on South Congress Avenue in Austin) but employees are occasionally required to attend in-person meetings at TAVP’s office or other locations in Austin.
To Apply
To apply please submit your resume and a cover letter via email to (archive@texasafterviolence.org) by July 11, 2024. Please include in the email subject line your full name and the position title. TAVP staff will begin responding to questions about the position on July 1, 2024.
TAVP is an equal opportunity employer and makes employment decisions on the basis of qualifications. We make a particular effort to recruit people of color, women, LGBTQ, working-class people, and people directly impacted by the criminal legal system and state-sanctioned violence. TAVP policy prohibits unlawful discrimination in any employment decision based on pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions, race, religious creed, color, national origin or ancestry, physical or mental disability, medical condition, marital status, age, sexual orientation, or any other basis protected by federal, state or local law or ordinance or regulation. We do not discriminate based on conviction history.
