Head of Research Collections
Trinity College Dublin, the University of Dublin Job Location: Other Date Created: 10-17-2016
Founded in 1592, Trinity is the highest ranked university in Ireland, and among the world’s leading higher education institutions. Located across 47 acres in Dublin’s city centre and offering undergraduate and postgraduate programmes to 17,000 students, Trinity is known for intellectual rigour, excellence, interdisciplinarity, and research-led teaching. Home to Nobel prize-winners such as scientist Ernest Walton and writer Samuel Beckett, Trinity draws visitors from across the world to its historic campus each year, including to the Book of Kells and Science Gallery which capture the university’s connection to both old and new.
The Library of Trinity College Dublin has the largest Library collection in Ireland, with over six million printed volumes, extensive collections of journals, more than half a million maps and very large collections of manuscripts reflecting over four hundred years of academic development. More recently, it has established a collection of over 80,000 electronic journals and over 350,000 electronic books. It has been a legal deposit library for Ireland and the United Kingdom since 1801.
The Library’s 2015-2020 Strategy states its ambitions to be truly at the core of the Trinity College Dublin community, providing increasingly diverse services, facilities and partnerships to ever-widening, inter-disciplinary academic fields; building on historic strengths and increasingly developing new areas; and balancing Trinity College Dublin’s international profile and its national responsibilities for the benefit of the entire community. Within this dynamic context, the newly-configured role of Head of Research Collections has been established to support with the successful delivery of this Strategy, utilizing Trinity’s research collections for the benefit of further research, educational and engagement activity. The Head will report to the Librarian & College Archivist and be part of the Library’s senior leadership team.
With extensive experience in Research Collections, special collections, manuscripts, archives or museums, successful candidates for this post will have proven experience of strategic leadership in major collections, and will be able to communicate a vision, and translate this into action, for developing collections and activities to both the Research Collections team and the wider University. S/he will ensure that the collections make a significant contribution to teaching, research, and engagement with the wider community, and will have demonstrated the ability to manage significant projects, preferably building projects with an empathy and understanding of multiple audiences, including visitors. Successful candidates will also have demonstrated the ability to develop relationships with donors and secure external funding from public and private sources, and will have an understanding of the exciting opportunities presented by technology.
For further details, including job description, person specification and information on how to apply, please visit www.perrettlaver.com/candidates quoting reference 2778.
Location: Dublin. Salary: Competitive. Contract: The Head of Research Collections will be appointed for a ten year contract, with a view to permanency within 5 years
The deadline for applications is Monday 14th November 2016 at 12 noon (GMT).
