Librarian / Archivist

Smokingpipes; Northern (KY); Hybrid; USD 45,000 - 65,000; Part time

Job summary

Laudisi seeks a Librarian/Archivist to steward a growing archive of pipe-related scholarship. You will catalog the physical collection in TinyCat, design a digital taxonomy in Google Drive, and serve as a reference desk for internal teams and external researchers.

You’ll help preserve a unique, field-wide record, make it searchable, and ensure materials survive and stay usable for scholars, journalists, and enthusiasts.

Qualifications

• Formal library or archival training is welcome, but demonstrable cataloging and reference experience matters more.
• Hands-on cataloging experience with a SaaS catalog like TinyCat / LibraryThing.
• Ability to design a metadata taxonomy from scratch, not follow a prebuilt one.
• Comfort with Google Workspace, Drive, and Labels feature.
• Genuine public-service instinct and willingness to help others find information.
• Appreciation for preservation and historical materials even if not requested.
• Curiosity about pipes, cigars, or related hobby worlds.
• On-site availability in the Grand Strand area; valid driver's license; able to pass a background check.

Responsibilities

• Catalog our physical collection (roughly 300–500 books/mags) in TinyCat and design a system to keep it findable.
• Create a digital taxonomy for our assets in Google Drive using Workspace Labels.
• Field reference requests from internal teams and external researchers, ensuring accurate results.
• Tag assets as they’re created and keep the taxonomy current as the collection grows.

Skills

Cataloging experience

TinyCat / LibraryThing

Metadata taxonomy design

Google Workspace (Drive, Labels)

Public-service mindset

Preservation of collections

Criminal background check clearance

Education

MLS/MLIS welcome

Tools

TinyCat

LibraryThing

Google Drive Labels

Job description

We're building an amazing team of individuals.

Librarian / Archivist

LIBRARIAN / ARCHIVIST

Looking for a job? Look elsewhere.

Looking for a project worth your expertise — at a place where preservation, scholarship, and a real instinct for order actually matter? Read on.

We're Laudisi — the people behind Smokingpipes.com, Peterson of Dublin, Cornell & Diehl, and a handful of other brands you've probably never heard of (but our customers are obsessed with). Here's something that surprises people: a great deal of what's actually known about pipes, pipe tobacco, and — increasingly — cigars doesn't live in any university library. It lives in out-of-print books, trade catalogs, decades of magazines, and company records that exist in only a few places in the world. As one of the oldest and largest names in this industry, we've become a steward of much of that record — including a growing archive centered on Kapp & Peterson, our pipe factory in Dublin, Ireland, whose history stretches back more than 160 years.

The scholarship is here. The organization isn't — most of it lives in boxes, on shelves, and in folders that make sense only to whoever last touched them. That's the project: to preserve it, make it findable, and become the person everyone turns to when they need to find something in it.

Your role? You're the steward of a small but genuine field of scholarship. You turn a scattered, genuinely important collection into a preserved, searchable archive — and you're the reference desk that internal teams, journalists, authors, and researchers come to when they need an answer and need it to be right.

WHAT YOU'LL ACTUALLY DO:

Catalog and preserve what we have, design the system that keeps it findable, and serve as a standing reference resource for the whole company — and for the researchers, writers, and enthusiasts doing serious work in a field that doesn't have many other archives to draw on.

You'll also:

• Catalog our physical collection — roughly 300–500 books and magazines, plus a Peterson-focused archive of real research value — in TinyCat, our LibraryThing-hosted catalog. It's open and public by design, so outside researchers can search and self-serve without going through you: a small library serving a field that's short on them.

• Design a digital taxonomy from scratch for our digital assets in Google Drive, using Workspace Labels — dropdowns, dates, people fields. This is the judgment work, and it's what makes everything after it easy.

• Field reference requests from teams across the company and occasionally from external parties — press, industry researchers, and the authors and enthusiasts who care about this history as much as we do, and who often can't find what they need anywhere else.

• Tag assets as they're created and keep the taxonomy current as the collection grows, so the work stays ahead of the pile instead of behind it.

YOU'LL THRIVE HERE IF:

You don't look at a pile of old books and trade catalogs and see clutter. You see a record worth preserving — and a system waiting to be built.

Maybe you've retired, or stepped back, and found that a mind trained to organize and preserve knowledge doesn't simply switch off because the career did. This is a real project for exactly that mind: not shelving and clock-watching, but the genuinely interesting work of taking a body of scholarship that exists in only a few places and making sure it survives, coheres, and can actually be used.

You take satisfaction in order and retrieval — in the difference between a collection that technically exists and one that anyone can actually use. You can design a taxonomy that other people understand, not just one that makes sense to you. And you like being the person people come to: the one who hears a half-remembered description of a magazine from fifteen years ago and knows exactly where to look.

You work independently, because you'll be the only librarian in the building. But you're not tucked away in a back room — a good reference desk is a service, and you treat it like one.

WHAT YOU'LL BRING:

• Formal library or archival training (an MLS/MLIS is welcome) is one path here — but a career's worth of demonstrated cataloging and reference experience matters more than any single credential. What we're really looking for is:

• Hands-on cataloging experience, and comfort learning a SaaS catalog like TinyCat / LibraryThing

• The judgment to design a metadata taxonomy from scratch — not just follow one someone else built

• Comfort working in Google Workspace, especially Drive and its Labels feature

• A genuine public-service instinct — you like helping people find things, and you're patient with the ones who don't quite know what they're asking for

• An appreciation for preservation for its own sake — you understand why a complete run of a defunct magazine matters, even when no one's asked for it yet

• Curiosity about pipes, cigars, or really any other "deep hobby" world where the minutiae matter — our Peterson archive rewards someone who finds this stuff genuinely interesting

• On-site availability in the Grand Strand area, a valid driver's license, and the ability to pass a criminal background check

THE HOURS:

Long term, this is very much a part-time job: 16 hours per week, onsite, split into four-hour blocks. During the initial first few months — during which you’ll be developing the taxonomy and indexing the materials — your work could stretch to 28 hours per week, largely at your discretion: We’ll sort that out together. Following the initial ramp, the scope shrinks to something more like a reference desk: internal requests, external requests, and keeping the taxonomy in good order. It’s the kind of part-time commitment that leaves room in your week while still giving you something real to sink your teeth into.

YOU CAN EXPECT:

• Compensation: $40/hour — above the regional library average, reflecting the specialized, dual-domain (physical and digital) nature of the work.

• The work itself: A collection worth preserving, real autonomy over how it's organized, and the rare luxury of building an archive the right way from the start instead of inheriting someone else's mess.

• Culture: A passionate group of "Laudisians" who like the products, like the customers, and like working with people who actually care.

• Reality check: We work around tobacco and smoke; many of us are enthusiasts. You'll sometimes be in or near smoking areas, so you'll need to be comfortable with that.

THE BOTTOM LINE:

This role isn't for everyone. It's for the librarian or archivist who understands that some collections deserve to be preserved, not just stored — and who wants to be the one who does it.

If you're reading this and thinking, "I'd rather just shelve books and clock out" — that's fair, and there are plenty of other posts out there.

But if the idea of taking a genuinely important collection that almost no one else has and making it survive, cohere, and serve the people who need it sounds like exactly the kind of project you've been missing?

We're building something here. Come help us build it right.

Applicants being considered must pass a criminal background check. Our hiring and employment practices are based solely on job related criteria, and we do not discriminate on the basis of any characteristic protected by law.