Head Librarian, Discovery & Metadata Services

Founded in 1863, Boston College is a Jesuit, Catholic university located six miles from downtown Boston with an enrollment of 9,484 full-time undergraduates and 5,250 graduate and professional students.  Ranked 35 among national universities, Boston College has 888 full-time and 1,281 FTE faculty, 2,711 non-faculty employees, an operating budget of $1.4 billion, and an endowment in excess of $3.5 billion.

The Head of Discovery & Metadata Services supports the BC Libraries with research, exploration, and recommendations on new approaches for the enrichment and extraction/transformation of metadata across library platforms and repositories. The Head provides vision, leadership, and management for the work of the department and serves as an innovative and future-oriented leader. The Head has skills and expertise in national metadata standards, as well as in the use of APIs, data transformation, and scripting languages to apply to structured and unstructured data. The Head uses these skills and expertise to explore and recommend new approaches for the Libraries’ metadata efforts, and supports the overall mission of the BC Libraries to help create, discover, deliver, and synthesize scholarly content for the benefit of the community. The Head further supports the BC Libraries’ goal of providing relevant resources and information through meaningful, individual, and technologically adaptable user experiences for the students, researchers, and faculty of Boston College.

The Head of Discovery & Metadata Services position is an essential leadership role supporting the BC Libraries’ mission and vision for the future of libraries, metadata, and services for our users. This position will both support and manage a range of efforts related to new and innovative uses of library metadata across scholarly platforms. The position will support metadata management activities related to our scholarly platforms and content, such as the use of BIBFRAME and linked open data to help specify and highlight the relationships across our content to enrich discovery.

The work will involve knowledge and expertise in libraries’ created and managed metadata, experience with tools to support generation and enrichment of metadata at varying/new scales, and the ability to help transform traditional metadata through creative collaboration. The Head position works with colleagues around the Libraries and in direct consultation with the AUL for Technology & Discovery Services for setting priorities, schedules, and the extent of all exploratory and operational work and responsibilities. This position reports to the Associate University Library of Technology & Discovery Services and manages a team of 7.

Please submit BOTH a cover letter and resume

Full-Time Equivalent Hiring Range: $90,100 to $112,600; salary commensurate with relevant experience.

• MLS/MLIS or Masters in Data Science or similar advanced degree required.
• Minimum of 5 years of experience working with metadata in academic libraries or research settings.
• Demonstrable experience working with scripting languages or tools to manage and transform metadata.
• Demonstrable experience using APIs or other web services to extract, transform, and update metadata within/across content management systems or repositories.
• Experience working on/managing metadata development projects.
• Experience supervising direct reports.
• Familiarity with generative AI technologies and LLMS and their potential applications for metadata creation, enhancement, and maintenance.