Hillel Arnold

New York, NY – hillel@hillelarnold.com – hillelarnold.com

Education

  • Master of Arts in History (concentration in Archival Management), New York University, New York, NY, 2009
  • Masters of Science in Library and Information Science, Palmer School of Long Island University, New York, NY, 2009
  • Bachelor of Arts in English Literature (concentration in Post Colonial Literature), Hunter College, 2005

Employment

Associate Director of Archives & Chief Digital Strategies Officer (July 2023 - present) - Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, NY

  • Assists in the planning and directing of the programs and activities of the Rockefeller Archive Center’s Archives Program, including the development and planning of short and long-range program goals and strategies consistent with the overall mission of the RAC.
  • In coordination with the Director of Archives, ensures the efficient operation of the Archives Program through effective leadership of and collaboration with supervisors, program managers, and staff members.
  • In collaboration with stakeholders across the organization, create and maintain a holistic digital strategy for the organization which promotes empowerment and constant learning.
  • Build, lead and support an integrated team responsible for providing technical expertise and leadership to the entire organization.
  • Facilitate the development of core skills across the organization including project management, facilitation process analysis, usability and accessibilty.
  • Convene and lead sector-level collaboration between archives and philanthropic organizations in support of the RAC’s efforts to become an organizational home for technology used in archives of philanthropic organizations.
  • Provide formal and informal consultation, coaching, and mentoring to colleagues in other archives or philanthropy tech.

Assistant Director for Digital Strategies (January 2016-June 2023) - Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, NY

  • Promote learning across the organization, particularly in areas of technology
  • Collaborate closely with the Director of Archives and members of the Archives Management team to iteratively improve efficiency and the user experience of archival processes.
  • In collaboration with the Director of Archives and members of the Archives Management Team, lead strategic implementation and/or decommissioning of systems to support archival processes.
  • Facilitate strategic adoption of and compliance with archival standards.
  • Contribute to and encourage RAC participation in open source communities and the archival profession with code, policy development, professional service and publication in professional venues.
  • Maintain awareness and develop in-depth knowledge of new technology, relevant national standards and best practices through professional meetings, conferences, workshops, and other educational and networking opportunities; assesses and integrates new developments into the digital program.
  • Conduct comprehensive review of structures, processes, documents and culture to evaluate organizational support for diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging.

Digital Archivist (June 2012-December 2016) - Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, NY

  • Implement, develop and maintain a variety of user-centered technical solutions to increase discoverability of and access to archival materials.
  • Identify use cases, develop functional requirements, implement and customize systems to match those use cases and requirements.
  • Evaluate and improve systems with ongoing testing including established metrics and in-person usability testing.

Project Archivist (September 2009-June 2012) - Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archive, New York, NY

  • Arrange and describe the Daily Worker/Daily World Photographs Collection.
  • Respond to reference requests, including on-demand digitization.
  • Serve on Special Collections EAD Stylesheet subcommittee.
  • Co-found and contribute to The Back Table, a blog for NYU’s Special Collections.
  • Develop policy and documentation for repository’s descriptive practices and implementation of the Archivists’ Toolkit.

Digital Projects Manager (October 2007-July 2009) - Foundation for Landscape Studies, New York, NY

  • Develop and implement digital library of cultural landscape images to be served via a variety of media, in collaboration with the Society of Architectural Historians and ARTstor.
  • Create metadata using VRA Core 4.0 schema and Getty Vocabularies (AAT, TGN, ULAN).

Graduate Assistant (May 2007 – July 2009) - Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archive, New York, NY

  • Survey, accession, process and create DACS-compliant finding aids for collections using the Archivists’ Toolkit.
  • Facilitate repository’s implementation of the Archivists’ Toolkit, including data ingest and cleanup.
  • Develop procedures and documentation for EAD encoding.
  • Survey Asian- and Pacific-American collections in the New York metropolitan area (METRO grant-funded project in collaboration with the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU).

Archives Assistant (October 2005 – August 2007) - Woody Guthrie Archives, New York, NY

  • Accession and describe additions to collection.
  • Process rights requests for print, audio, and video materials.
  • Provide reference support for internal and external research by email, phone and in person.
  • Develop public programs (Global Woody: Language, Culture, History and Harmony) and exhibits (Note of Hope, Cartoon Limbo).
  • Supervise interns on specialized projects including as collection processing and database creation.

Additional Training

  • Implementing DACS in an Integrated CMS: Using the Archivists’ Toolkit, Society of American Archivists, January 2009.
  • Internship, Digital Experience Group, New York Public Library, January-May 2009.

Skills

  • Natural Languages: Spoken and written English; reading knowledge of Spanish and German; familiarity with Urdu.
  • Programming Languages: Ruby, Python, PHP, SQL, Unix shell scripts.
  • Applications: Microsoft Office, Adobe Creative Suite, Archivists’ Toolkit, ArchivesSpace.
  • Web Frameworks/Content Management Systems: Rails, Django, AngularJS, Bootstrap.
  • Operating Systems: Linux, Mac OS X, Windows.
  • Database Systems: MySQL, MongoDB, Access.
  • Web/Markup Languages: Schema.org, XML, XSLT, HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, PHP.
  • Archival/Library Metadata Standards: DACS, EAD, Dublin Core, MODS, METS, TEI.
  • Classification Standards and Thesauri: LCSH, LCNAF/NACO, LC Classification, AAT, VRA 4.0 Core.
  • System Administration: Linux, Apache, Tomcat, MySQL.

Papers and Presentations

  • Creating a User Interface for Authoring PREMIS Rights, (presenter) International Conference on Digital Preservation (iPRES), September 2023
  • Searching for the Commons: Reflecting on Access Realities Surfaced through User Research, (panelist) Society of American Archivists Annual Meeting, July 2023.
  • One Step at a Time: Shrinking Our Carbon Footprint, (co-presenter) Society of American Archivists Research Forum, July 2023.
  • Including and Unleashing Everyone: Using Liberating Structures for Strategic Conversations in Archives, (co-facilitator) Society of American Archivists Annual Meeting, August 2022.
  • Including and Unleashing Everyone: Facilitation with Liberating Structures, (co-facilitator) Code4Lib Conference, May 2022.
  • Developing a Community-Based Strategic Agenda to Transform Archival Discovery and Delivery, (panelist) Coalition for Networked Information, December 2019.
  • Records in Motion: an open, standards-based approach to digital records transfers, (poster, with Hannah Sistrunk) Society of American Archivists Research Forum, August 2018.
  • Archival Values, (speaker) Society of American Archivists Annual Meeting, August 2018.
  • Learning in Motion: Collaborating Across Organizations to Manage, Preserve & Use Digital Records, (panelist) Technology Affinity Group, November 2017.
  • For Good Measure: The Role of Regulatory Records in Environmental Maintenance, (speaker, with Eira Tansey) Society for the History of Technology, October 2017.
  • “What’s Wrong and How to Fix It”: Woody Guthrie and the Maintenance of Folk Music, (speaker) Maintainers II, April 2017.
  • Archives as Sites of Resistance, Liberation and Creativity, (speaker) The Word is Action: Engaging the Bible and Social Justice in memory of Walter Wink, October 2016.
  • Critical Work: Archivists as Maintainers, (speaker) Society of American Archivists Research Forum, August 2016.
  • Foundation Archives: How Changes to the Way We Work is Sparking Innovation in the Way We Record Our History, (panelist) Philanthropy New York, March 2016.
  • staticAid: a static site generator for archival description, (speaker) Code4Lib Conference, March 2016.
  • From Transfer to Access: Digital Records at the Rockefeller Archive Center, (speaker) Consortium of Foundation Libraries, Council on Foundations, July 2015.
  • Making EAD Make Sense, (speaker) New York Archives Conference, June 2015.
  • Arrangement and Description for Born-Digital Materials, (speaker, with Bonnie Gordon) CURATEcamp, April 2015.
  • Better Search Through Listening, (speaker) edUI Conference, October 2014.
  • Highways, Wires and Tubes: Regulation, Power and Communication Networks, (speaker) Society of American Archivists Annual Meeting, August 2014.
  • Testing Early, Testing Often, (speaker, with Sibyl Schaefer) Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference, May 2013.
  • The Burning of Paper Instead of Children, (speaker) Society of American Archivists Annual Meeting, August 2012.
  • The Daily Worker and Daily World Photographs Collection, (speaker) Archivists Round Table of Metropolitan New York, 2011.
  • It’s a Small World After All: The Daily Worker and Daily World Photographs Collection, (speaker) New York Archives Conference, June 2010.
  • Documenting the Asian/Pacific American Community, (speaker) Archivists Round Table of Metropolitan New York, 2009.
  • Audio Collections at the Woody Guthrie Archives, (speaker) Association of Recorded Sound Collections, New York Chapter, 2009.
  • Documenting the Asian/Pacific American Community, (speaker) Metropolitan New York Library Council, 2009.
  • Working with Living Archives: Challenges and Opportunities in a Survey of Asian/Pacific American Collections in the New York Metropolitan Area, (poster) Society of American Archivists Annual Meeting, August 2009.
  • Too Much Information: Archival Description of Radical History Collections, (speaker) National Council on Public History, April 2009.
  • Working with Living Archives: Challenges and Opportunities in a Survey of Asian/Pacific American Collections in the New York Metropolitan Area, (poster) National Council on Public History, April 2009.

Publications

  • “Practicing Care: Constructing Social Responsibility through Feminist Care Ethics” in Archival Values: Essays in Honor of Mark A. Greene, Society of American Archivists, 2019. preprint
  • Information Maintenance as a Practice of Care (co-author). permalink
  • The Future of Email Archives (contributor), Council on Library and Information Resources, August 2018. permalink
  • Research Agenda: Valuing Labor in Digital Libraries (contributor), DLF Working Group on Labor in Digital Libraries, August 2018. permalink
  • “Implementing Schema.org at Rockefeller Archive Center” (case study) in Putting Descriptive Standards to Work (eds. Kris Kiesling and Chris Prom), Society of American Archivists, 2017. permalink
  • Shared inquiry in the archives (with Laura Miller), National Council on Public History, History@Work Blog. 26 July 2016. permalink
  • The First Publishing Experience (Or, Using Graduate School Work for a Higher Purpose) (contribution), SAA SNAP Roundtable Blog. 17 December 2015. permalink
  • My Name Is New York: Ramblin’ around Woody Guthrie’s Town, PowerHouse Books, 2012.
  • A Sign of Contradiction: The Record Keeping Practices of the New York City Catholic Worker, American Catholic Review 121:2 (Summer 2010). permalink

Teaching

  • Introduction to DACS, (instructor) Society of American Archivists, 2013-2016
  • Advanced Archival Description (adjunct professor) New York University, 2015-2018

Memberships and Professional Service

Society of American Archivists

  • Member, 2007-Present.
  • Member and Instructor, Technical Subcommittee on DACS, September 2010-August 2016. Co-Chair, August 2015-August 2016
  • Administrator, EAD Help Pages Bibliography, December 2010-August 2013.
  • Co-Chair, EAD Roundtable, August 2011-August 2013.
  • Member (ex officio), Technical Subcommittee on EAD, August 2011-August 2013.

Archivists Round Table of Metropolitan New York

  • Member, 2008-Present.

Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference

  • Member, 2009-Present.

Archipelago Advisory Board

  • Member, 2019-Present.

Awards

  • DLF Forum Fellowships for Librarians New to the Profession, Digital Library Federation, Spring 2009