"Open Publishing Applications Specialist"

Open Publishing Applications Specialist

The Claremont Colleges Services (TCCS) is the central coordinating and support organization for a highly regarded cluster of seven independent colleges known as The Claremont Colleges. TCCS, with about 300 staff members, provides exceptional shared services to 9,000 students, and almost 3,600 faculty and staff. TCCS staff work in both student-facing services as well as administrative and operational services. Our numerous departments are located throughout The Claremont Colleges campus in the beautiful city of Claremont, California.

ABOUT THE POSITION

The Open Publishing Applications Specialist (OPAS) will join a highly motivated team of librarians to support open access and open publication, and enhance discovery and delivery of scholarship, creative works, data, and more. This position will provide technical support and trainings for our current suite of scholarly communication and open publishing applications, which includes The Claremont Colleges Digital Library (CCDL), Scholarship@Claremont (S@C) and Pressbooks. This role builds connections to internal and external applications and uses creativity and innovation to create new and exciting applications that improve the development, access, and discovery of open educational resources. This role works within established IT standards and practices to support and expand our digital scholarship infrastructure, including the institutional repository, Scholarship@Claremont, open educational resources, and digital publishing platforms, such as the CCDL. They will be committed to providing excellent service and to developing effective and efficient workflows to ensure that our Open Publishing programs continue to meet the research, teaching and learning needs of The Claremont Colleges.

Priority Deadline: The deadline for first consideration is January 23, 2026. Please note that a cover letter and CV/resume are required along with the application.

ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS

Open Publishing Services

• Contributes to the development and customization of open-source publishing tools in alignment with institutional needs and open access principles.
• Leads the technical development and support of emerging open publishing technologies and platforms, including those supporting open educational resources (OERs), student scholarship, and faculty publications hosted on Scholarship@Claremont.
• Collaborates with library and institutional partners to build sustainable workflows for open educational publishing and other scholarly outputs.

Platform Development and Technical Support

• Maintains applications and workflows that support academic publishing services for platforms such as CONTENTdm and Bepress Digital Commons
• Provides one-on-one or small group training for library staff, faculty, and/or students on how to use applications and tools such as migrating Open Educational Resources (OERs), as needed.
• Collaborates with relevant Library colleagues in designing and implementing integrations between digital library platforms, including CONTENTdm, for open publishing and campus systems such as learning management systems or other third-party tools via APIs or custom development solutions.
• Collaborates with TCCS IT and library colleagues to support a secure, scalable, and sustainable technology environment.

Digital Initiatives and Open Publishing team

• Contributes to policy and process development related to open scholarship and publishing in collaboration with the Digital Initiatives and Open Publishing head and the Open Publishing and Digital Production Associate.
• Maintains current knowledge of developments in open publishing and institutional repository management, and other aspects of evolving strategies for scholarly communications and open infrastructure technologies.
• Participates as an active and engaged team member by attending unit meetings to discuss priorities and assist with solutions.
• Contributes to unit planning and goal setting in support of the library's strategic initiatives.
• Welcomes and values everyone's perspectives; is committed to fairness and to equal access to information.
• Perform other related duties as assigned.

QUALIFICATIONS

Education/Training:

• Bachelor's degree in related field.
• Formal coursework or training in web or application development

Experience:

• Minimum 2 years experience with the following:
  • Supporting institutional repository systems, including storing, organizing, securing, and sharing digital assets (Bepress Digital Commons, Pressbooks, Hyrax, DSpace, Islandora)
  • Working with prevalent library data formats such as MARC, DublinCore, XML, JSON, and Linked Open Data
• Experience working in a collaborative environment, particularly in higher education, libraries, or cultural heritage institutions
• Experience with enhancing or supporting digital accessibility

Competencies:

• Knowledge of information systems for research discovery.
• Ability to effectively train and support non-technical users (in the adoption and use of systems, tools or processes)
• Strong organization, time management, and planning skills. Effective at meeting deadlines, adjusting priorities, and working on multiple projects simultaneously.
• Open to learning and developing new skills
• Excellent interpersonal, verbal, and written communication skills.
• Demonstrated ability to collaborate effectively with colleagues and researchers from many different communities.
• Demonstrated ability to make decisions independently in a rapidly changing environment.

Preferred Experience:

• Knowledge of cloud-based or containerized application environments (Docker, AWS, Reclaim Cloud) with one or more programming or scripting languages (JavaScript or TypeScript, CSS, Python and/or PHP, SQL)
• Experience with platform migration strategies
• Understanding of open standards (IIIF), open data, and open research and their role in academic research
• Experience in project review, analysis, development, planning, and assessment.

Work Schedule: The regular hours for this full-time position are 40 hours scheduled from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Monday through Friday for 12 months annually. May be required to work holiday, weekend, and/or evening hours. Regular hours may vary due to the needs of the organization or business unit. This position is eligible for a hybrid work schedule to work partial hours remotely as approved by the supervisor.

Union: This position is represented by The Claremont Colleges Services Library Staff Federation AFT Local 6735. The employee in this position will be bound by the collective bargaining agreement.

COMPENSATION

Pay: The pay rate for this position is competitive and commensurate with the duties, responsibilities, and qualifications required for the position, between $33 - $36.06 per hour.

Benefits: This position is eligible for our employment benefits package including:

• medical, dental, vision,
• 10% retirement contributions after one year (no matching required),
• group life insurance,
• generous time off,
• professional development funds,
• discounts for mobile plans, software, and entertainment,
• access to fitness facilities,
• and more!