Digitisation Assistant
Newcastle University |
||
Newcastle, UK |
||
The Role
As a member of the Newcastle University Library’s Special Collections Team, you will be responsible for capturing high quality digital images from our archives and rare books, conforming with standards and best practice in collections care and accessibility. Working closely with our Digitisation Technician, you will respond to customer requests for digitisation and the needs of the wider team to fulfil projects and programmes where digital images are required for research, learning, and engagement purposes, as well as preservation surrogates. This includes ensuring descriptive metadata is captured in consultation with colleagues.
The specific project you will be responsible for is the creation of high quality digital surrogates of Special Collections’ unique annotated volumes of scholarly journal ‘Notes and Queries’ (1876 - 1915), as a collaboration with Brown University.
The post is fixed term for a duration of 12 months.
Key Accountabilities
As a member of the Newcastle University Library’s Special Collections Team, you will be responsible for capturing high quality digital images from our archives and rare books, conforming with standards and best practice in collections care and accessibility. Working closely with our Digitisation Technician, you will respond to customer requests for digitisation and the needs of the wider team to fulfil projects and programmes where digital images are required for research, learning, and engagement purposes, as well as preservation surrogates. This includes ensuring descriptive metadata is captured in consultation with colleagues.
The specific project you will be responsible for is the creation of high quality digital surrogates of Special Collections’ unique annotated volumes of scholarly journal ‘Notes and Queries’ (1876 - 1915), as a collaboration with Brown University.
The post is fixed term for a duration of 12 months.
Key Accountabilities
- To carry out on-demand digitisation of material from the Library Collections as requested by Special Collections staff, researchers and other library users
- To participate in the digitisation of prioritised archival material and library collections to support wider access and dissemination, following in-house guidelines and workflows
- To capture accurate, appropriate metadata according to the specifications of the Special Collections team
- To handle high value and/or fragile materials for the purposes of high-quality digitisation
- To facilitate access to digitised material via our in-house digital asset management system and other emerging platforms
- To keep accurate records of all digitisation activities, including details of work completed, work in progress and work pending
- To document all digitisation activities and collaborate with the Digitisation Technician to update and maintain instructions and guidelines for other users
- To supervise the Special Collections Reading Room as part of a regular timetabled commitment and to assist with retrievals when necessary
- Knowledge of image manipulation software and design packages
- Excellent IT Skills, including full standard Microsoft Office packages
- Excellent time management skills and ability to prioritise workloads with minimal supervision
- Experience in working with scanning and photography equipment.
- Experience in working to deadlines.
- Experience of working in a University environment
- Methodical approach towards workloads and attention to detail
- Ability to follow instruction regarding technical workflows
- Good communication and problem solving skills
- Ability to convey technical information
- Minimum of 5 GCSEs at grade C or above, two of which should include Maths and English