Contract Archivist: August 28, 2023 - June 28, 2024
Gwich'in Tribal Council in partnership with NWT Archives

Location: Yellowknife, NT
Compensation: $46/hr, 37.5 hrs/wk = $74,175

Established in 1992, the Gwich'in Tribal Council (GTC) is an Indigenous organization that represents Gwich'in Participants in the Mackenzie-Delta of the Northwest Territories and across Canada.

This project proposes a continued partnership between the Gwich'in Tribal Council - Culture and Heritage Department and the NWT Archives to hire a professional archivist to assist with the AV materials within the Canadian UNESCO-Memory of the World Registered collection, the Gwich'in Tribal Council - Gwich'in Social and Cultural Institute fonds at the NWT Archives.

Description and Duties    

Located in the NWT Archives in Yellowknife NWT at the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre, the contract archivist would be working on critical audio visual records requiring digitization, migration (both of the media itself and its metadata) and preservation. This project will also continue work with current and former GSCI staff to prioritize materials according to cultural importance and describe materials using Gwich'in names, placenames and traditional knowledge.

This is the third of several phases of work required to fully arrange, describe and preserve the GTC-GSCI fonds. The first phase was completed with the assistance of an LHOV grant in 2019/2020. A concerted effort to determine preservation priorities for language-related materials is now paramount.

The GTC-GSCI fonds is an irreplaceable collection of indigenous traditional knowledge, language and cultural material, created expressly for the preservation and promotion of Gwich'in language and culture. It is comprised of approximately 250 linear feet of textual records, 400 maps, 100 audiovisual recordings, 850 audio recordings, 10,000 photographs, and ca. 4 TB of digital records, all of various formats. After several years of work doing triage and arrangement, the audio visual (AV) materials require arrangement, description, and prioritization. Verifying duplicates, masters and surrogate files for the AV material will also be done, as well as cross-walking original datasets to archival descriptive standards.

Project Deliverables:

This project has the following deliverables for the third stage of processing the GTC-GSCI fonds:

• Verification of duplicates and appraisal recommendations for AV material
• Rehousing of special media as required
• Determining prioritization of special media requiring migration/digitization
• Arrangement and migration of available digital AV material into final digital storage locations, creation of web files for database access.
• Migration of available metadata into RAD compliant description for photo series, audio series and video series
• Loading completed descriptions and surrogates to the NWT Archives AtoM-based catalog (expected to be in multiple thousands of item descriptions)
• Strategic planning document for future work relating to AV material.

Qualifications    

Master's degree in Archival Studies or related equivalency with experience in an archival setting. Experience with relevant audiovisual tools, technology and digitization standards an asset. Equivalencies considered on a case-to-case basis.

Learn more about the project partners and the beautiful city of Yellowknife:

• https://www.gwichin.ca/
• https://www.nwtarchives.ca/
• https://www.yellowknife.ca/
• https://extraordinaryyk.com/

Please send cover letter and resume to nwtarchives@gov.nt.ca
Please apply by email

Application Deadline: Open until filled

86589542_gtc-gsci_job_ad.pdf