Digitisation Assistant

Salary: -  £24,600 per annum

Newcastle University is a great place to work, with excellent benefits. We have a generous holiday package; plus the opportunity to buy more, great pension schemes and a number of health and wellbeing initiatives to support you.

Closing Date: 09 December 2024

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.  

Informal enquiries may be made to: Ian Johnson, Head of Special Collections and Archives: (tel: 0191 208 7671; email: Ian.Johnson@ncl.ac.uk ). 

Interviews will be held 7th January 2025

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 

The Person 

Knowledge, Skills and Experience  

• 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 

Attributes and Behaviour 

• 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 

Qualifications 

• Minimum of 5 GCSEs at grade C or above, two of which should include Maths and English 

Newcastle University is a global University where everyone is treated with dignity and respect.  As a University of Sanctuary, we aim to provide a welcoming place of safety for all, offering opportunities to people fleeing violence and persecution.

We are committed to being a fully inclusive university which actively recruits, supports and retains colleagues from all sectors of society.  We value diversity as well as celebrate, support and thrive on the contributions of all of our employees and the communities they represent.  We are proud to be an equal opportunities employer and encourage applications from individuals who can complement our existing teams, we believe that success is built on having teams whose backgrounds and experiences reflect the diversity of our university and student population.

At Newcastle University we hold a silver Athena Swan award in recognition of our good employment practices for the advancement of gender equality.  We also hold a Race Equality Charter Bronze award in recognition of our work towards tackling race inequality in higher education REC.  We are a Disability Confident employer and will offer an interview to disabled applicants who meet the essential criteria for the role as part of the offer and interview scheme.

In addition, we are a member of the Euraxess initiative supporting researchers in Europe. 

Requisition ID: 27785