Clarification from the agency

Open to current Smithsonian Institution employees with federal career/career-conditional status or eligibility. More than one selection may be made from this announcement.

The Supervisory Historian manages the acquisition of primary sources, manuscript collections, digital records, and audiovisual materials. This position also oversees the Archives’ oral history program in scope, standards, and future direction.

In this position, you will:

• Provide supervision, guidance, review, evaluation, and design training for incoming staff.
• Oversee the development of AAA’s collections (referring to both manuscripts and oral histories) with primary responsibility for the Collections Stewardship Plan and national collecting initiatives.
• Serve as an authority on the history of American art and culture. 
• Collaborate and consult with the Head of Collections Processing and Digitization and the Registrar to ensure sound communication and workflows for all collection-related activities. 
• Oversee collections-based public programs including exhibitions.

Conditions of employment

• Requires career/career-conditional status or eligibility.
• Males born after 12/31/59 must be registered with Selective Service.

Conditions of Employment

Qualification requirements, including one year time-in-grade at the next lower grade level for promotion candidates, must be met within 30 days of the job announcement closing date. See the 'Required Documents' section for additional information.

For information on qualification requirements, see Qualification Standards Handbook for General Schedule Positions viewable on OPM Website.

Qualifications

Basic Qualifications:

1. Degree: history; or related field that included at least 18 semester hours in history.

   OR

2. Combination of education and experience: courses equivalent to a major in history, or a major in a related field that included at least 18 semester hours in history, as shown in 1 above, plus appropriate experience or additional education.

Evaluation of Graduate Education

Graduate study in the social sciences or humanities may also be credited when such study included training in historical research methodology; or the thesis approached the subject from an historical viewpoint and used professional historical research methodology and techniques in its preparation.

In addition to the basic qualification requirement above:

Experience: You qualify for this position if you have one year of specialized experience equivalent to at least the GS-12 level in the Federal Service.  For this position, specialized experience is defined as 1) experience leading a team tasked with collections development, and 2) managing an oral history program to include the solicitation, acquisition, description, and scholarly appraisal of archival collections.

Experience refers to paid and unpaid experience, including volunteer work done through National Service programs (e.g., Peace Corps, AmeriCorps) and other organizations (e.g., professional; philanthropic; religious; spiritual; community, student, social). Volunteer work helps build critical competencies, knowledge, and skills and can provide valuable training and experience that translates directly to paid employment. You will receive credit for all qualifying experience, including volunteer experience.

Part-time and/or unpaid experience related to this position will be considered to determine the total number of years and months of experience. Be sure to note the number of paid or unpaid hours worked each week.

How you will be evaluated

You will be evaluated for this job based on how well you meet the qualifications above.

Your application will be evaluated first for the basic qualifications described above. The applications that meet the basic qualifications will be evaluated further against the following criteria:

1. Supervision - Ability to set performance expectations, supervise, and formally evaluate within an established institutional performance management system, a staff of permanent and intermittent collections specialists, and oral history archivist. 
2. Program Management - Knowledge of and ability to interpret and apply existing collection guidelines, policies, and procedures to achieve program objectives including flexibility to develop /adapt new guidelines where existing ones do not apply.
3. Project Management - Ability to advise, assign and work with contractors and staff on collections, interviews, methodology and best practices includes engaging all stakeholders, scheduling, background research, ensuring safety of collections.
4. Collection Public Programs - Ability to produce professional quality, talks, panel discussions, workshops, podcasts, exhibitions, and publications designed to enhance the scholarly use of and public engagement with archival collections of American Art History.

Important Note:

Your resume and supporting documentation will be compared to your responses to the occupational questionnaire or other assessment tool for consistency. If a determination is made that you have rated yourself higher than is supported by your resume, you will be assigned a rating commensurate to your described experience. Your resume should provide detailed information regarding how your education and experience relate to this position, including the major duties and qualifications criteria listed.