Position Description: The position of Publisher Liaison is a unique opportunity to work directly with authors and publishers who wish to contribute their copyrighted digital content to the Bookshare.org library of digital electronic books for the blind and print disabled. The library currently contains over 35,000 volumes. Through a special mandate from the US Department of Education, over the next five years the collection will grow to include over 100,000 additional volumes in support of all print-disabled students nationwide. Much of that content will be contributed directly by publishers of educational material. Bookshare.org will then convert the material to the accessible formats of DAISY and Braille for distribution to qualified Bookshare members. The Publisher Liaison will be responsible for encouraging, enabling and coordinating those contributions. He or she will also have responsibility for obtaining global rights to contributed content, whenever possible.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

• Document the ways in which publishers and authors can contribute their content to the Bookshare.org library
• Work directly and proactively with those copyright holders to obtain permission for the conversion of their digital files, and when appropriate, request global distribution rights for that material
• Maintain detailed records of all relationships and permissions held with publishers and authors, including the specific content for which they have given permissions
• Work directly with the Bookshare.org Collection Development Manager and Bookshare.org Librarian to create and prioritize plans for acquiring rights to content
• Attend professional conferences to educate publishers and school officials on how they can contribute content to the Bookshare library

Qualifications

Required

• Senior-level experience working directly in or with the book publishing industry in an editorial, marketing or managerial position
• Very strong professional interpersonal skills and the ability to represent Bookshare.org's mission to a wide variety of stakeholders including authors and publishers as well as school district and university-based coordinators of books for the disabled

Highly Desirable

• Knowledge of the assistive technology field with emphasis on tools and technology used to provide access to alternative versions of printed materials
• Knowledge of XML content and formatting standards
• Knowledge of different types of meta-data used to describe books and how that data can be used to cross index library collections