Rights & Reproduction Coordinator

Full Job Description

The Smithsonian Institution is the world's largest museum, education, and research complex, with 21 museums and the National Zoo.

This position is located within the Department of Digital Collections, Office of Digital Access and Archives, Division of Public History, National Museum of American History (NMAH), at the Smithsonian Institution (SI).

Experience: You qualify for this position if you have one year of specialized experience equivalent to at least the GS-09 level in the Federal Service.

For this position, this specialized experience is defined as: managing rights and reproductions functions at a cultural heritage institution, determining the rights status for collections media based on contemporary intellectual property and privacy laws, and digitizing collections to high level professional standards, including still image capture using professional digital camera systems and audiovisual reformatting of analog media using specialized equipment and established conversion workflows.

OR Ph.D.

or equivalent doctoral degree OR 3 full years of progressively higher level graduate education leading to such a degree OR LL.M., if related such as library and information science, digital asset management, intellectual property law, media preservation and museum studies.

OR a Combination: Education and experience may be combined to meet the basic qualifications. For a full explanation of this option please see the Qualification Standards.

Special Instructions for Foreign Education: If you are qualifying by education and/or you have education completed in a foreign college/university described above, it is your responsibility to provide transcripts and proof of U.S.

accreditation for foreign study. For instructions on where to fax these documents, see the "Required Documents" section of this announcement.

Your resume must be no more than two (2) pages and should clearly demonstrate how your experience aligns with the responsibilities and specialized experience required for this position.

Do not copy language directly from the vacancy announcement, as you will be deemed ineligible for consideration. Instead, provide detailed, descriptive information about your actual experience.

Experience refers to paid and unpaid experience, including volunteer work done through National Service programs (e.g., Peace Corps, AmeriCorps) and other organizations (e.g., professional; philanthropic; religious; spiritual; community, student, social).

Volunteer work helps build critical competencies, knowledge, and skills and can provide valuable training and experience that translates directly to paid employment.

You will receive credit for all qualifying experience, including volunteer experience.

Part-time and/or unpaid experience related to this position will be considered to determine the total number of years and months of experience.

Be sure to note the number of paid or unpaid hours worked each week. Major Duties:

The primary purpose of the position is to extend the use of NMAH's collections by fulfilling user requests for digital assets in a range of formats; coordinating and directly performing image‐based and audiovisual digitization; evaluating rights and legal reuse of media assets; and performing digital asset management tasks.

In this position, you will: • Facilitate requests from internal and external stakeholders to obtain and use digital media assets depicting the museum collection.

• Communicate professionally with requestors regarding timelines and available rights and reproductions services, including high‐resolution imaging, audiovisual reformatting, and usage permissions.

• Research and review media assets for potential legal, ethical, and policy restrictions.

• Evaluate risks and advise on the fair and legal use of NMAH's digital collections media by internal and external users.

• Directly perform and support digitization of collections materials, including museum objects, analog audiovisual materials, and photographic‐ and paper‐based archival materials, using overhead photography, flatbed scanning, 3D capture, and audiovisual reformatting.

• Prepare and import media assets into the Smithsonian's digital asset management system and reference these assets in the museum's collections and archival information systems.