WE'RE HIRING

JOB TITLE: Collection Coordinator (Young Canada Works)

HOURS: 32 hrs/week, 4-day work week

DURATION: June 16 – October 16, 2026

WAGE: $25.36/hr

DEADLINE: Monday, May 11, 2026, 5 pm

The Workers Arts and Heritage Centre’s mandate is to preserve, honour, and promote the culture and history of all working people. WAHC is located just off Hamilton’s creative hub, James Street North in a designated heritage building, the Custom House, on the traditional territory of the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe. 

WAHC is currently seeking a Collections Coordinator to carry out a Young Canada Works – Building Careers in Heritage-funded project focussing on documenting, storing and interpreting a newly-donated collection of the Canadian edition of the United Auto Worker newspapers from the 1940s and 1950s. 

In addition to carrying out collection management duties associated with this new acquisition, the intern will research and interpret the collection with a focus on underrepresented stories that centre equity-deserving workers and their histories as well as stories of activism and advocacy. This project will work towards the goal of drawing connections between auto workers’ news stories from the newspaper collection with diverse contemporary issues and struggles for working people in Canada.

Reporting to the ED and working with the staff team, the Intern can expect to carry out the following duties: 

• Handle and sort the newspaper collection according to issue, volume and year
• Gather metadata about the collection through interviews and online research
• Assign each object with an accession number and add to our master collection inventory list in compliance with our collections policy
• Carry out the photodocumentation of newspapers in collaboration with local partner organizations
• Add/update metadata to our CMS catalogue: object descriptions, condition, adding a digital image of each newspaper, and adding nomenclature descriptions
• Create a summary of the contents of each newspaper as a finding aid 
• Store objects using archival storage solutions that ensure their longevity and preservation
• Create interpretive social media content
• Take on more general collection duties as necessary for WAHC’s collection of approximately 2000 objects.

The ideal candidate for this position will possess: 

• Some experience in a community museum or art gallery setting through a school placement and/or a recent graduate of a related educational program
• Strong communication skills, both oral and written
• Basic computer skills in a PC environment, and ideally comfortable with Google suite of products and project management software; familiarity with collections management systems
• A clear and strong interest in history, heritage, labour, art, material culture, and social justice
• Ability to be open minded, flexible, adaptable to a fast paced environment and a community museum setting with stretched resources and a non-dedicated collections curator
• Ability to take direction, work collaboratively and be open to discussion and suggestions
• Capacity to be task-oriented and work on a number of things at the same time
• Demonstrated capacity to be willing to learn new skills and work with others

For the complete job posting, click here.

Interested applicants should apply on the Young Canada Works portal by Monday, May 11, 2026 at 5 pm.

Note: Priority will be given to graduates that have not previously participated in YCW internship programs and that are unemployed or underemployed.

No phone calls or email inquiries please. We regret that we can only respond to those selected for an interview.

WAHC promotes and values employment equity. We encourage those who have experienced discrimination based on sexual orientation, race, class, gender, ability and other systemic forms of oppression to apply and self-identify if they wish to do so. 

Please note that our building is accessible and should you require any accommodations throughout the hiring process, please let us know with your submission.