Reporting to the Head of Digital Archives and working closely with the Director of the Rose Library and the Interim Archival Systems Program Manager, the Irish Poetry and Virtual Reading Room Project Manager will lead the Rose Library’s Mellon Foundation–funded initiative to explore the viability of establishing a virtual reading room to share the Rose Library’s Irish poetry collections more effectively with users in Ireland. The Project Manager will coordinate efforts to define the current challenges inhibiting access to the Rose’s Irish poetry collections; identify key partners and stakeholders amongst Irish libraries, archives, and cultural centers; conduct focus groups amongst researchers to identify research challenges for Irish collections; complete an environmental scan of virtual reading room models and  practices; investigate copyright considerations and licensing requirements for a virtual reading room focused on literary collections; determine the scope, requirements, and costs of digitizing key collections; scope, plan, and assess an experimental remote access method; create workflows and documentation for remote users and external partners; draft user stories and requirements for a future virtual reading room; and make recommendations for social, legal, and technological ways to expand the current methods of discovery and delivery of Irish literary papers held by the Rose Library.

At the completion of the two-year grant cycle, the Irish Poetry and Virtual Reading Room Project Manager will have created a viable framework for a shared virtual reading room, including generating concrete recommendations for implementation, drafting a policy framework, and working with stakeholders across Emory Libraries to develop policies, roadmap proposals, business cases, digitization project proposals, and copyright and risk assessments. Finally, the Irish Poetry and Virtual Reading Room Project Manager will develop a sharable, scalable toolkit and set of best practices to guide and support other repositories interested in conducting similar projects and assessing their impact.