Job Description

The Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) protects public health and the environment by supplying clean drinking water, collecting and treating wastewater, and reducing air, noise and hazardous materials pollution. The Department manages the City’s water supply, which provides more than one billion gallons of high quality drinking water daily to more than half the population of New York State. It builds and maintains the City’s water distribution network, fire hydrants, storm and sanitary sewage collection systems and Bluebelt and green infrastructure systems and manages 14 in-City wastewater resource recovery facilities as well as seven wastewater resource recovery facilities in the upstate watershed. DEP also implements federal Clean Water Act rules and regulations, handles hazardous materials emergencies and toxic site remediation, oversees asbestos monitoring and removal, enforces the City’s air and noise codes, bills and collects on approximately 836,000 water and sewer accounts and manages citywide water conservation programs.

Records and Archives Management (RAM), within the Bureau of Business Information Technology, collects, organizes, protects, and provides access to records having long-term business and historical value to the agency and the City of New York. It is a valuable resource for information about DEP including the work of predecessors that planned and built the city’s water supply and delivery systems dating back to the 19th century. RAM supports the agency and its employees to manage records effectively and in compliance with DEP and citywide policies. The team’s ongoing projects improve access to information and facilitate the planning of billion-dollar capital construction and rehabilitation projects, as well as land use activities, facilities maintenance, and other operations.

Reporting to the Director of Records and Archives Management, major responsibilities of the Digital Collections Archivist include administration of the Digital Asset Management system (Extensis Portfolio), directing digitization projects, acquiring and processing born-digital records, and implementing a strategy for preserving digital assets. This position will monitor system hardware and storage needs and interface with the agency’s Information Technology group on behalf of the unit.

This position will be based at the DEP Archive in Manhattan with the requirement to travel periodically to DEP headquarters in Queens and occasionally to offices and plants around the city and upstate to survey records and meet with employees.

Responsibilities:

• Administer digital asset management system including service contracts and software upgrades.

• Develop, document, and implement workflows and procedures for accessioning and processing digital content.

• Accession and process born-digital records from agency creators (including public affairs photography, capital construction photography, and publications); lead efforts to locate and transfer high value digital records from agency creators to archive.

• Develop and document digitization workflows. Plan and direct digitization projects and perform ad-hoc scanning as required. Oversee in-house and vendor-provided digitization.

• Responsible for digitization equipment maintenance, calibration, service contracts, and replacement over time.

• Hire, train, and supervise student workers, including quality assurance, troubleshooting scanning and software issues, and ensuring deadlines are met.

• Perform quality control of digitized materials and metadata records.

• Apply metadata schemas and produce metadata guidelines when needed.

• Collaborate on the development of metadata schemas and controlled vocabularies.

• Implement a strategy to preserve digital assets.

• Oversee hardware and software needs such as servers, storage, and support contracts; plan for growth and replacement.

• Responsible for data backup system implementation and improvement.

• Maintain and report metrics on digitization projects, born-digital acquisitions, and other significant information that demonstrates work progress and the merits of the unit’s digital program.

• Fulfill agency obligation to Local Law 11 of 2003 which requires city agencies to transfer electronic copies of required reports to the Department of Records and Information Services.

Qualifications

1. A master's degree from an accredited college in Library Science, Archival Science, American History, Political Science or a related area, plus two years of full-time experience in archival or library science, one year of which must have been in a supervisory capacity of incumbents performing at a professional level; or

2. Education and/or experience equivalent to "1" above. However, all candidates must have a master's degree from an accredited college and the one year of supervisory experience as described in "1" above.

Additional Information

The City of New York is an inclusive equal opportunity employer committed to recruiting and retaining a diverse workforce and providing a work environment that is free from discrimination and harassment based upon any legally protected status or protected characteristic, including but not limited to an individual's sex, race, color, ethnicity, national origin, age, religion, disability, sexual orientation, veteran status, gender identity, or pregnancy.