Digital Metadata (Structural Metadata Officer)

Location: St Pancras
Contract: Fixed term until 31/12/2025
Hours: Full time (36 hours) 
Grade: C
Salary: £ 28,119

About the role

The British Library leads and collaborates in growing the world’s knowledge base. We are engaged in a major partnership with the Qatar Foundation and the Qatar National Library to digitise and make available material relating to the history of the Gulf and Arabic scientific manuscripts. We are a multi-disciplinary programme that includes retrieval, conservation, content specialists, curators and cataloguers, translation, rights clearance, imaging, and workflow staff.

The partnership is currently in its fourth phase. We will be delivering an additional 675,000 searchable and contextualised digital images, made freely available via the dedicated portal at www.qdl.qa and selected from the library’s archive collections, including the India Office Records and Private Papers, Sound, Maps and Arabic Manuscript collections.

This is an exciting opportunity to be part of the Programme’s cataloguing team. You will be responsible for: accurate foliation of archival material and creating structural metadata for the Programme content; triage and resolution of issues related to structural metadata in digital files and objects; creation and editing of archival Authority File records for India Office Records and Private Papers (IOR&PP) relating to the history of the Gulf (in accordance with professional standards); and identification of the creators of copyright material within collections items.

You will have experience of or interest in working with archival materials and digital objects in an archive, museum or gallery, the ability to work with accuracy and attention to detail, the ability to work to deadlines, teamwork and strong communication and IT skills.

About us

We are the national library of the UK and we are here for everyone.  Our shelves hold over 170 million items – a living collection that gets bigger every day. Although our roots extend back centuries, we aim to collect everything published in the UK today, tomorrow and far into the future. Our trusted experts care for this collection and open it up for everyone to spark new discoveries, ideas and to help people do incredible things.

 We have millions of books, and much more besides. Our London and Yorkshire sites hold collections ranging from newspapers and maps to sound recordings, patents, academic journals, as well as a copy of every UK domain website and blog. Our public spaces provide a place to research, to meet friends, to start up a new business or simply to get inspired by visiting our galleries and events. We work with partners and libraries across the UK and the world to make sure that as many people as possible have the chance to use and explore our collections, events, and expertise. And we’re always open online, along with more and more of our digitised collection.

What we can offer you
A competitive salary.
A fantastic pension scheme with minimum employer contributions of 28.97% (this may be higher dependent on grade).
Flexible working hours, with the ability to take up to 5 days flexi leave in a 3-month period.
25 days holiday.
Full details of employee benefits can be found on our Careers: Benefits

Closing date: 25 February 2025

Museum Website: https://ce0752li.webitrent.com/ce0752li_webrecruitment/wrd/run/ETREC179GF.open?WVID=5071482BMD&VACANCY_ID=71464471Ul