Museum Technician (Natural Science) IS-1016-07

Smithsonian Institution•Washington, DC

7d•Hybrid

About The Position

The National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) is seeking experienced candidates to fill multiple museum technician roles in the Departments of Botany and Entomology. The NMNH holds a collection of over 148 million specimens and objects across 7 science departments. In the Department of Botany, our plant collections total 5 million specimens, making this collection one of the ten largest in the world. In the Department of Entomology, the US National Entomological Collection is one of the largest collections in the world. All work performed will be in accordance with established collections management policies and procedures within the Departments of Botany and Entomology, and the NMNH. The incumbents are involved in various technical aspects of collections, curation, and research support, including transportation, preparation, registration, preservation, storage and utilization of the collections in Botany and Entomology. The position will be in the Department of Botany or Department of Entomology.

Requirements

One full academic year of related graduate level education or a bachelor’s degree with superior academic achievement from an accredited college or university and/or 3-5 years of related experience.
Knowledge and skill with best practices with the management and preservation of biological research, with specialized experience in either Botany or Entomology.
Demonstrated ability to physically handle and work with natural history museum specimens.
Skill to communicate verbally and in writing with museum personnel and staff.
Knowledge of special techniques used in processing and digitizing data related to natural history collections.
Familiarity with taxonomic, cultural, geologic, and/or geographic classifications employed in natural history collections.
Ability to enter digital data utilizing a relational database related to natural history collections.
Ability to operate digitization equipment including digital cameras and scanners.
Ability to use image editing software.
Ability to work in a team setting.
Pass Pre-employment Background Check and Subsequent Background Investigation for position designated.
Complete a Probationary Period.
Maintain a Bank Account for Direct Deposit/Electronic Transfer.
Eligible to work in the United States.

Responsibilities

Assist with natural history collections management tasks in the botanical or entomological collections, such as mounting/preparation and sorting specimens using respective standards and procedure of the Botany and Entomology departments.
Participating on teams or with higher level staff in performing a wide variety of physical care projects for natural history collections, including registration records in any of its storage locations.
Ensuring that projects to which they are assigned result in properly documented, prepared, catalogued, curated, maintained and accessible collections according to established guidelines and procedures.
Incorporating specimens into the type and general research collections or collection holding areas and maintaining those collections in usable, systematic (taxonomic) order, or other arrangements as directed. This often requires the rearrangement of portions of the collection and processing incoming or backlog collections, as directed by supervisor or project leader.
Creating accurate labels following departmental standards for botanical or entomological specimens.
Re-curating sections of the collection by re-labeling portions as needed with current taxonomic classification, reorganizing specimens in proper curatorial order, decompressing the collection where specimens are stored too tightly, replacing dirty, improperly sized or failing storage containers.
Assist in the digitization, data entry, and maintenance of natural history collections and specimen data, such as compiling, checking, verifying, and maintaining data records created from source materials like labels, specimen/objects, catalogs as necessary and recording data on the appropriate forms, labels, other documents or in computer systems as required by the data management process.
Tracking data through the data management process, proofreading data for technical errors and content, referring to original source documents as necessary, generating technical data such as specimen/object counts and collection item locations, operating various data-entry equipment.
Working under the guidance of subject-matter experts using a variety of digitization techniques including, but not limited to, cameras, scanners and image editing software to prepare digital images and generating digital descriptive records of specimens for the purpose of documenting the museum’s collections and enhancing the information content of the museum’s catalog of record stored in a relational database.