Research Librarian for the Humanities - Tisch Library

Tufts University's Tisch Library seeks an innovative, flexible, and collaborative colleague to join us as Research Librarian for the Humanities.

The Collections and Liaison Services Department supports the research needs of Tufts Arts & Sciences and Engineering academic departments, fostering a culture of information literacy. We are seeking a colleague who can complement, strengthen, and expand partnerships across the library and the university, and address barriers that limit access to services, collections, programs, and spaces.

The Research Librarian for the Humanities builds connections with their assigned academic departments to understand the evolving needs of those departments and, working with others, to align instruction, outreach, consultation, and collection development activities to meet those needs.

A successful candidate will:

• Create effective relationships with assigned academic departments, developing an understanding of the scholarly needs of their faculty and students. Spend time outside the library participating in relevant campus and department events, with discretion to experiment in pursuit of effective support of patron need.
• Design and teach instruction sessions and offer individual research consultations that have a measurable impact on student learning, to both support immediate student need and help develop transferable skills for students' information lives outside and beyond Tufts.
• Create and maintain instruction materials (e.g., tutorials, research guides, websites, handouts, and exercises) using best practices for usability, accessibility, and outcome-based learning design.
• Seek opportunities to offer integrated, scaffolded, and high-impact information literacy instruction, including proposing and leading instruction beyond one-shot sessions (e.g., credit-bearing courses as part of the Tufts Experimental College, train-the-trainer workshops for faculty, multi-part retreats for thesis writers) and providing faculty with assignment development support.
• Build excellent collections in support of Tufts' goals to be both student-centered and research-focused, including monograph selection, approval plan management, database trials and analysis, and collection review projects. Help shape collections priorities that align with the research and learning needs of Arts & Sciences and Engineering.
• Collaborate closely with colleagues across the Research & Learning division to co-teach, offer effective referrals, and support cross-department work. Through committee work and projects, share knowledge of faculty and student needs in designing responsive library services.

This full-time, full-year position is hybrid and includes work that can be done remotely as well as work that must be done on-site (e.g. classroom instruction and other programming, training, and collaboration).

The search committee will begin reviewing applications on March 28, 2025. Applications should include a cover letter.

Basic Requirements:

• Knowledge and skills as typically acquired by a Master's degree in Library/Information Science from an ALA-accredited program, or international equivalent
• Minimum of 2 years' experience providing instruction in an academic library or other public service environment
• Experience with and/or willingness to cultivate an understanding of the changing research and learning practices at a student-centered research university; to use data for decision-making; and to thrive in a collaborative, complex, and rapidly changing environment

Preferred Qualifications:

• Graduate-level experience conducting primary source research in a relevant humanistic field, such as history, religion, classics. Knowledge of current research practices and issues in history
• Experience with and/or willingness to cultivate expertise in topics such as primary source literacies, digital humanities, and/or working with special collections
• Experience leading peers in project or committee work
• Collection development experience