Your Role
In assuming this role, you will have the immediate opportunity to take stock of and further develop our work in the areas of content, collections, and workflows, including monographs and books and discovery and access. User practices, organizational barriers, preservation concerns, and business strategies have been important considerations in our work to date.
We have also been taking on a growing array of work in equity and diversity, in research support services, in the support of teaching, and in surveys. You will also have the opportunity to define and develop new areas of focus that anticipate the needs of our community.
In your work, you will link Ithaka S+R’s sophisticated understanding of academic users’ practices and needs, with a) organizational strategy and product direction for libraries and content providers, and b) with community infrastructure requirements and policy needs.
Our organization and this role will provide you with an opportunity few others can offer, including:
- Examining the strategy, business, policy, and product dynamics and dilemmas of academic libraries, scholarly publishers, and intermediaries;
- Conducting research that has a direct impact on individual academic institutions, publishers, content platforms, and scholarly societies;
- Joining a small and collegial team with strong methodological expertise and deep community engagement, affording an opportunity to deepen your research skills while learning more about policy issues and strategic questions facing academic institutions today; and
- Working with and learning from leading figures in academic libraries, scholarly publishing, and applied anthropology and survey research for the higher education community.
You will work from our New York City office as part of a team that includes ethnographers, analysts, and our survey specialist. You will work collaboratively on projects with these colleagues and others from Ithaka S+R, with project teams assigned based on project needs and staff capacity. You will report to the director of our Library and Scholarly Communication program.
Specific Objectives and Responsibilities
You will collaborate with potential clients, partners, and funders to develop new research initiatives and consulting projects. You will maintain close relationships in the communities we serve, convene groups to discuss their needs and our directions, and write proposals for various types of work (such as consulting and grant proposals). To be successful, you must possess well-developed instincts in designing research and consulting projects to suit the budget constraints and programmatic requirements of clients, partners, and funders. You will be equally fluent in Ithaka S+R’s strategy and the needs and opportunities of the communities we serve, and you will strengthen the connections between them.
You will also look forward to rolling up your sleeves to work directly on multiple concurrent research and consulting projects with ambitious deadlines focusing on the changing roles of academic libraries and scholarly publishers. You will be expected to hit the ground running to manage projects through to high-quality, on-time completion, sometimes paired with an analyst or other colleague/partner and sometimes working on your own. You will bring rich skills in gathering and analyzing information, interpreting analyzed data and writing reports, and coordinating project activities and resources.
Your primary responsibilities will be to:
- Conceptualize and design new areas of work and specific projects, successfully securing outside resources to support them;
- Establish and manage relationships broadly across our communities, including with potential project partners, clients, and funders;
- Conduct project research and analysis and design data-gathering instruments;
- Coordinate and manage project teams and other project resources to ensure high-quality, on-time, at-budget completion;
- Communicate trustworthy findings and insightful recommendations via written reports and presentations to individual clients and our broader community;
- Maintain awareness of and insight on strategic issues and opportunities that face our communities;
- Travel to client sites and conferences for research, reporting, and outreach and representation purposes, representing Ithaka S+R; and provide coaching, constructive feedback, and other forms of professional development to project team members.
This position will require travel on the order of approximately 20%.
Challenges you’ll overcome
You will be developing projects in areas that are innovative for Ithaka S+R and our community, so you will be creative, exploratory, open to constructive feedback from a variety of sources, and comfortable when even some good ideas do not pan out.
Your projects will be complex, and several will be running simultaneously at any one time, so you will be expected to take the initiative and assume leadership responsibility so that every project is completed successfully.
Skills, Experience, and Characteristics
We encourage candidates with diverse backgrounds and interests, meeting the following requirements, to apply for this position:
- At least five years of work experience in academic libraries, scholarly publishing, and/or consulting, ideally in a role that has provided substantial exposure to strategy or product development/management;
- Familiarity with the broad strategic directions and issues facing academic libraries, scholarly publishers, and intermediaries, and fluency with the issues facing at least one of these groups;
- Existing and growing public presence and/or network in the academic library, scholarly publishing, and/or intermediary communities;
- Demonstrated success in formulating project funding requests;
- Possess superior research, writing, proofreading/editing, and interpersonal skills;
- Acute attention to detail and absolute commitment to accuracy, quality, and excellence; and
- Demonstrated ability to lead and manage multiple complex projects concurrently, working independently with minimal guidance but also as part of a team.
In addition, these characteristics will be valued in your candidacy and should be emphasized in your application:
- Working familiarity with the technical standards and specifications of scholarly content platforms, digital library services, and other library/publisher/intermediary services and infrastructure;
- Comfort working with quantitative data and ideally some experience with its analysis;
- Experience supporting an IRB submission process and/or coordinating other types of institutional approvals for research on faculty members or students; and/or
- Current human subjects (social/behavioral science) research certification or training (for example, certified through CITI or a college or university IRB).
Work for us
Come join our team of talented and dedicated people with great ideas who want to make the world a smarter place. Individuals will be rewarded with excellent career development and a fantastic benefits package that includes:
- Choice of two medical plans, one at no cost to the employee
- Employer paid dental, vision, life insurance, and employee assistance programs
- Employer contributed retirement and much, much more
Learn more about working at ITHAKA.
ITHAKA is an equal opportunity employer.