Content Specialist Archivist

Location: St Pancras
Contract: Fixed Term until 31/12/2025
Hours: Full time / Part time
Grade: B
Salary: £33,600 per annum

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 cataloguing material from the India Office Records and Private Papers (IOR&PP) relating to the history of the Gulf. There will also be opportunities to write blogs to contextualise the material and present it to new audiences, and contributing to project outreach, including participating in tours and show and tells.

You will have a postgraduate archive qualification or equivalent experience, substantial knowledge and experience of archival cataloguing and relevant standards, palaeography skills, the ability to work with accuracy and attention to detail, the ability to work to deadlines, teamwork and strong communication and IT skills.

We are considering part time as well as full time applications.

As one of the world’s great libraries, our duty is to preserve the nation’s intellectual memory for the future and make it available to all for research, inspiration and enjoyment. At present, we have well over 170 million items, in most known languages, with three million new items added every year. We have manuscripts, maps, newspapers, magazines, prints and drawings, music scores, and patents. We make our collections and programmes available to all. We operate the world’s largest document delivery service providing millions of items a year to customers all over the world. What matters to us is that we preserve the national memory and enable knowledge to be created both now and in the future by anyone, anywhere.

In return, we offer a competitive salary and a number of excellent benefits. Our pension scheme is one of the most valuable benefits we offer, as our staff can become members of the Alpha Pension Scheme where the Library contributes a minimum of 28.97% (this may be higher dependant on grade. Another significant benefit the Library provides is the provision of a flexible working hours scheme which could allow you to work your hours flexibly over the week and to take up to 5 days flexi leave in a 3 month period. This is on top of 25 days holiday from entry and public and privilege holidays.

Closing date: 12 January 2025
Interview date: TBC

We are unable to provide sponsorship under the UK Skilled Worker visa for this role, as it does not meet the eligibility criteria required for this immigration route.

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