Scholarly Communications and OER Librarian

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Position Summary:

Established in 1964 as the first public university in southeast Florida, Florida Atlantic University serves 30,000 undergraduate and graduate students on six campuses along Florida's beautiful southeast coast in Broward, Palm Beach, and St. Lucie counties. Florida Atlantic has ten distinguished colleges that offer more than 180-degree programs, including the Schmidt College of Medicine, and is home to one of the world's preeminent marine science education and research centers, the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute. Florida Atlantic University is taking its place among the world's great research centers and has been given the designation of a "High Research Activity" university by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. FAU was ranked 27th by U.S. News & World Report among all American universities for campus diversity, with 49% of its student body classified as minority or international students. In 2015, it earned the distinction of being a federally designated Hispanic Serving Institution.

The Florida Atlantic University Libraries have prioritized working collaboratively with an R1 campus community on a Top 100 research initiative that includes a highly library engaged campus and community environment. FAU Libraries house approximately 3.7 million items and provide access to over 80,000 electronic journals, nearly 500 databases, and a growing collection of e-books and streaming videos. The Libraries house many distinctive collections, including artists’ books, sound recordings, print music, rare books and manuscripts, and University Archives. The Digital Library creates online collections from unique materials housed in Special Collections and University Archives and serves as the University's repository for the intellectual output produced on campus. 

The Florida Atlantic University Libraries seek a student focused, high-energy, collaborative, organized, engaged, positive, innovative, strong written and verbal communicator, and self-starter, who adapts well to change and can manage multiple projects. We endeavor to be a highly engaged organization that believes in striving for excellence, utilizing assessment and data for decision-making, and maintaining a culture of appreciation/gratitude, as an R1 University pursuing a Top 100 national ranking. Successful candidates are also expected to demonstrate commitment to professional development and lifelong learning

Reporting directly to the Assistant Dean for Access, Research, and Learning Services, the successful candidate will provide leadership, direct outreach, and support to the University Community on issues related to scholarly communications, copyright, open access, and open education, delivering focused services to promote faculty, student, and staff engagement with Open Educational Resources, Scholarly Publishing, and Open Pedagogy. This position provides expertise in alternative publishing models, open scholarship, author rights, copyright, and compliance with public-access requirements for federally funded research, ORCID ID usage, and is responsible for tracking trends such as predatory publishing that affect access to scholarly information.

Essential Functions

• Serve as the Libraries’ primary contact for scholarly communication questions and initiatives and strengthens the Libraries’ leadership role in scholarly communications for Florida Atlantic.
• Lead development and implementation of policies relating to copyright, open licensing, and attribution of Creative Commons licensed materials.
• Deliver timely presentations and educational and instructional programs, empowering faculty, staff, students, and community partners to make informed decisions regarding copyright and fair use; authors rights and open access publishing; institutional and open repositories; and other related topics.
• Support and educate the campus community regarding scholarly communications, copyright, open access, transformative publishing agreements, open education, and systematic reviews.
• Participate in outreach services to promote faculty, student, and staff engagement with Open Educational Resources, Scholarly Publishing, and Open Pedagogy.
• Promote and market open access, OER, and other issues related to scholarly communications to faculty and researchers in collaboration with liaison librarians, Libraries’ External Relations, and campus stakeholders.
• Create workshops, subject guides, and social media content for Open Access Week, literature reviews, plagiarism, and artificial intelligence.
• Serve as an advocate for open practices across campus, including the use of open resources, open and affordable learning materials, open data, and access to free data sets.
• Support faculty in adopting and creating open educational resources (OER) and promote open pedagogy practices, including renewable assignments and student knowledge creation.
• Work with Libraries’ Administration, liaisons, and University departments to raise awareness and encourage and generate broad participation in advancing course material affordability initiatives including adopting OER into their curriculum and low or no-cost textbook alternatives.
• Actively support and promote the Libraries’ physical and electronic textbook reserve initiatives including working with the Florida Atlantic bookstore, students, and faculty to request donations for textbooks for the Libraries’ Textbook Reserve collections at the Boca Raton and Jupiter Campus libraries.
• Investigate creating Textbook Reserve collection at the Florida Atlantic Davie and Fort Lauderdale campus locations.
• Create and/or maintain research guides and other documentation on resources and best practices regarding scholarly communication, OER, and predatory publishing.
• Support Digital Commons and access to materials beyond paywall.
• Serve as a champion for the institutional repository (IR) and share responsibility for IR management.
• Stay current and track trends on regional, national, and international developments in the field (e.g. copyright, bibliometrics, scholarly publishing, open access/open educational resources) including maintaining a national and global professional scholarly communications network to enhance current awareness of open knowledge practices and possibilities.
• Evaluate open access initiatives and tools or services that support scholarly communication and advise Libraries’ Administration on policy development.
• Assist with annual collection of IPEDS/ACRL statistics.
• Serve as the Libraries representative to scholarly communications related groups and ad hoc committees including serving on the Textbook Transparency and Affordability Committee (a University level committee co-chaired by the Libraries and the Provost’s Office).
• Provide periodic assessments of the campus environment about scholarly communication issues and works with appropriate units to identify gaps in services and knowledge.
• Participate in FAU programs and events that promote student recruitment, academic preparedness, engagement, and graduation.
• Participate in Libraries’ liaison program including development and review of LibGuides.
• Support the Libraries’ KPIs and other strategic initiatives.
• Participate in Libraries’ engagement events.
• Contribute to developing and strengthening a positive view of the FAU Libraries as an active partner in the University’s educational and research mission and assist with promoting the Libraries’ needs and services.
• Develop an annual professional development plan.
• Investigate opportunities to carry out, publish, and present original scholarship, research, and scholarly projects related to the area of expertise or responsibility.
• Serve on appropriate Libraries, University, regional state or national committees including professional committees, and actively participate in faculty governance.
• Perform other job-related duties as assigned.

The University Libraries at Florida Atlantic University seeks scholars who are committed to supporting the learning needs of students from various backgrounds and to thoughtfully engaging all communities in higher education. Florida Atlantic University embodies a culture of strategic and collaborative community engagement that results in mutual benefit to the institution and the various internal and external communities that it serves.

FAU Benefits and Perks

Position is a non-tenure-track faculty position at the rank of Assistant University Librarian on a 12-month contract with service and sustained expectation of scholarship, research, and/or creative endeavors (as outlined in the FAU Libraries’ Promotion Guidelines: https://library.fau.edu/staff/faculty/promotion-guidelines) required for promotion. 

FAU Libraries offers (as budget permits):

• Financial support for professional memberships
• Financial support for professional development participation, leadership, and service activities including travel.

FAU offers significant competitive benefits and perks. In addition to helping drive change and having a positive impact by supporting our students, staff, faculty, and local communities, FAU offers:

• Excellent benefit packages including Medical (PPO/HMO $50 per month single & $180 per month family), Dental, Vision, Life Insurance, Flexible Spending plans, Employee Assistance Program (EAP) and much more.
• State retirement options including tax-deferred annuities and Roth 403(b) plans.   
• State employees Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program - https://studentaid.gov/manage-loans/forgiveness-cancellation/public-service 
• Flexible work arrangement plans - https://www.fau.edu/hr/employee_relations/flexwork.php 
• Sick Leave Pool Program
• Paid time off (eligible employees) including vacation and sick leave, 9 paid holidays, and paid winter break (at President’s discretion).
• Paid Community Engagement Volunteer Service Day - https://www.fau.edu/hr/files/COMMUNITY_ENGAGEMENT_VOLUNTEER_LEAVE4-2015.pdf 
• Employee Educational Scholarship Program (EESP) for eligible Staff/Faculty - Tuition assistance after 6 months of full-time employment. For in-unit faculty, the EESP program may be extended to spouses and dependent children (eligibility rules apply).

For details on FAU's outstanding  offers, visit us at https://www.fau.edu/hr/benefits/index.php. 

Minimum Qualifications:

• ALA-accredited Master’s degree in Library and Information Science or equivalent.
• Minimum of two years of experience emphasizing scholarly communication issues in academic, special, or research libraries.
• Knowledge of U.S. copyright law and policy, especially as it applies to the application of Fair Use Doctrine and reuse permissions in academic and research settings.
• Knowledge of international copyright law and policy, especially as it applies to digitization and digital humanities projects.
•Knowledge of Open Education Resources (OER), course materials affordability initiatives, current library course reserves and interlibrary loan practices, controlled digital lending, and shared collections initiatives.
• Knowledge of institutional repositories, author publishing agreements, Creative Commons licenses, open access publishing models, publisher licensing practices, predatory publishing, researcher IDs (ORCID), and other issues and trends relevant to the scholarly communications landscape.
• Experience providing instruction sessions, presentations, and one-on-one and group consultations to users and advising colleagues and administrators.
• Demonstrates ability to work independently and collaboratively as a team member and team leader where consultation, flexibility, creativity, collaboration, and cooperation are essential.
• Experience in teaching and facilitating the learning of individuals with diverse levels of readiness.
• Demonstrates strong organization skills and excellent oral and written communication skills.
• Ability to use information technologies for effective communication and work productivity.
• Demonstrates initiative and strong interpersonal skills with a high level of professionalism and exceptional work ethic.
• Ability to analyze and adapt to change in an ever-evolving and rapidly growing institution.
Preferred
• Second Master’s degree and/or doctorate.
• Five years of experience emphasizing scholarly communication issues in libraries, academia, scientific or scholarly publishing, or other relevant settings.
• Knowledge of the academic research enterprise and related infrastructures and systems; the research lifecycle; grants and research funding; funder mandates and compliance; research integrity and ethics; and scholarly publishing and dissemination.  
• Enthusiasm for engaging with emerging trends and technologies that have implications on intellectual property and scholarly communications, especially Artificial Intelligence and machine learning, data science, research data management, public and open scholarship, and scholarly impact.
• Experience performing assessments and creating reports and presentations to inform a wide variety of stakeholders and community members.
• Experience with supporting institutional repositories and or digital libraries from an intellectual property and scholarly communications role in a comparable environment.
• Higher education outreach and engagement experience.
• Demonstrates sustained record of scholarship, research, and/or creative endeavors.
• Demonstrates record of service with leadership roles on committees and projects.
• Experience using Scopus/SciVal.
• Experience working with an integrated library system (ILS) and discovery tool (e.g., Ex Libris Alma/Primo VE).
• Experience using Canvas Learning Management System.
Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities
• Knowledge of U.S. and international copyright law and policy in academic and research settings especially as applies to digitization.
• Experience with Open Education Resources (OER) and course materials affordability initiatives.
• Experience creating research guides, providing instruction, presentations, and consultations on issues related to scholarly communication, copyright, open access, open education, and textbook/course materials affordability.
• Experience using learning management systems.
• Demonstrates knowledge of institutional repositories, especially Digital Commons.
• Demonstrates service commitments in leadership roles on committees, contributing to the profession through significant professional service.
• Demonstrates sustained scholarship, research, and creative endeavors, contributing to the profession through peer-reviewed publications in librarianship and presentations at regional or national library-related conferences.
• Demonstrates initiative and strong project management skills in leading significant projects.
• Demonstrates commitment to actively participating in library engagement activities.
• Demonstrates commitment to professional development and lifelong learning.
• Experience working in a multi-campus environment or multi-institutional consortia.

Salary:

$50,000.00 - $55,000.00

College or Department:

University Libraries

Location:

Boca Raton

Work Days and Hours:

N/A

Application Deadline:

2025-03-31

Special Instructions to Applicant:

This position is open until filled and may close without prior notice.
This position is subject to funding.
All applicants must apply electronically to the currently posted position on the Office of Human Resources' job website (https://fau.edu/jobs) by completing the required employment application for this recruitment and submitting the related documents.
Required Documents:
FAU’s Career Page permits the attachment of required/requested documentation.
PLEASE NOTE: A maximum of five (5) documents may be attached to your application. If more than five (5) documents are required for submission, please combine additional documents into a single attachment to not exceed the maximum permitted.
The site permits the attachment of required/requested documentation. When completing the online application, please upload the following:
1. Cover letter addressing the essential functions, minimum qualifications, and knowledge skills, and abilities regarding this position
2. Curriculum vitae
3. Provide a written statement on the following topic: Based on the current landscape, how might artificial intelligence impact scholarly communication programs at large research universities? (250 words)
4. Provide the names and contact information for three references
Top applicants will be invited for a campus visit and will be asked to give a presentation on a topic to be determined.
Transcripts:
The selected candidate for this position is required to submit an official transcript sent directly from the institution for the Provost’s credential file prior to the first day of employment. Similarly, for degrees from outside the United States, the evaluation by an organization belonging to the National Association of Credential Evaluation (NACES), with an indication of the documents the evaluation was prepared from (official transcripts, diplomas, dissertation abstracts) is required for the Provost’s credential file prior to the first day of employment. Transcripts must be issued to Florida Atlantic University, not to the individual applicant.
Background Screening:
Selected candidates must successfully complete and pass all employment screenings prior to the start of employment. Employment screenings may include a criminal background check (level I and level II), motor vehicle check, credit check, reference checks, alcohol, and drug screening check.
As a Hispanic-serving institution, Florida Atlantic University (FAU) is one of the most racially and ethnically diverse institutions in the Florida state university system. We are committed to recruiting and retaining talented faculty and staff. We embrace our shared responsibility to create and celebrate a welcoming and inclusive campus environment for all. Our community features excellent schools, a vibrant and safe community, and a sub-tropical climate conductive to year-round outdoor activities.
Accommodations:
Individuals requiring accommodation, please call 561-297-3057. 711