By Becky Gipson 

Tulane University Libraries (TUL) is growing, and we're looking for two dedicated professionals to join our team in New Orleans. These new positions reflect the Libraries' commitment to expanding digital access, preserving unique collections, and building meaningful partnerships, and they offer exciting opportunities to contribute to work that matters.

Library Coordinator III — Digital Initiatives

Our Digital Scholarship & Distinctive Collections Division is hiring a Library Coordinator III to support the vital work of our Digital Initiatives Department. This role sits at the intersection of technology, metadata, and hands-on digitization, making it an ideal fit for someone who enjoys both detail-oriented work and creative problem-solving.

Working under the direction of the Digital Production Librarian, the Library Coordinator III will take a leading role in creating and managing metadata records, digitizing analog materials, and ingesting content into Tulane University Digital Collections. The position also carries meaningful supervisory responsibilities: the successful candidate will hire, train, and supervise student workers, manage the student workers' budget throughout the year, and ensure consistent quality control across digital files and working documents.

Day-to-day work will include editing metadata using spreadsheets and scripting or coding languages such as XML, generating technical metadata, monitoring the submission queue for theses and dissertations, and cross-training on repository, imaging, discovery, and preservation systems. The position also supports the Libraries' institutional repository and contributes to the publication of several Open Access journals and digital exhibits, work that directly expands free, equitable access to scholarship for researchers everywhere.

This is a hands-on, mission-driven role for someone passionate about the long-term stewardship of digital collections — including the distinctive materials that document New Orleans's culture, history, music, and community for generations to come.

Operations Supervisor — Google Books Digitization Project

Tulane University Libraries is embarking on a transformative, large-scale digitization partnership with Google Books. Through this initiative, TUL will provide more than 120,000 volumes for digitization, with materials ultimately made available for digital preservation in HathiTrust, one of the most significant academic digital repositories in the world.

To lead this effort, we are hiring an Operations Supervisor to serve as the primary point of contact between the Libraries and Google. This is a highly collaborative, project-management-focused role that will shape how Tulane's collections reach researchers and readers around the globe.

The Operations Supervisor will attend regularly scheduled meetings with Google representatives, coordinate with an internal Google Books Advisory Group, and ensure that core responsibilities — including technical processing, barcoding, and preparing books for shipment — are completed on time and to standard. The role also includes managing pickup and delivery schedules, supervising a dedicated project team member, and drawing in support from the Library Annex & Special Projects unit, Stacks Management, and student workers as needed.

Candidates should bring strong project coordination skills, supervisory experience, and comfort working with library systems such as Ex Libris Alma and Microsoft Office tools including Excel and Word. The ideal candidate is flexible and thrives in a fast-moving environment, communicates clearly across teams, and can independently manage competing deadlines without losing sight of the bigger picture. Physical requirements include the ability to pull and reshelve materials and lift up to 30 pounds. This is a multi-year role, and upon the project's completion, the position will transition into the Library Annex & Special Projects unit to support ongoing similar initiatives — offering long-term stability and continued meaningful work.

Join a World-Class Research Institution

Both positions are based in New Orleans, one of the most culturally vibrant, historically rich cities in North America, and offer the opportunity to join an institution of remarkable breadth and depth. Tulane University Libraries comprises four physical locations across two campuses, Uptown and Downtown, and serves Tulane's nine schools and one undergraduate college with a staff of approximately 95 full-time librarians and library professionals.

The collections are extraordinary in scale and scope: more than 5.6 million titles, including over 4.6 million physical volumes, 2.7 million eBooks, nearly 200,000 online journals, and access to more than 900 databases. Tulane University Special Collections alone holds nearly 2,500 archival collections and over 100,000 volumes of rare books dating as far back as the 13th century — materials that document the history, culture, and communities of New Orleans and the wider Gulf South region.

TUL is a proud member of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), HathiTrust, the Digital Library Federation (DLF), the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI), and other leading organizations that define the future of research libraries. The Libraries are deeply committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion across all aspects of leadership and professional practice — and we welcome candidates who share that commitment.

To learn more or apply for either position, visit the Tulane University Libraries jobs page.