Based in the Preservation & Access Team, this exciting role has responsibility for digital collections management, operational management of the Digital Repository, and assisting with digital preservation skills-building across the Parliamentary Archives. The role provides both professional and technical support to the whole office, helping us embed best practice in terms of how we preserve and provide access to digital archives.
The role would suit someone with strong digital and interpersonal skills, who would enjoy working in a friendly, pragmatic and user-focussed team to support Parliament’s digital preservation services. The post holder will also work closely with colleagues in the Parliamentary Digital Service to ensure the continued preservation and accessibility of Parliament’s digital records through keeping our tools and systems performant.
The Preservation & Access team is made up of 14 staff, including archivists, digitisation and collections care professionals and two trainees. The Parliamentary Archives is based in the House of Lords but is a shared service jointly funded by both Houses of Parliament. It holds over 13km of physical records dating back to 1497 and its Digital Repository is growing rapidly.
The Role
Reporting to the Senior Archivist (Digital Preservation), the post holder will support the delivery of a comprehensive digital preservation function for the Parliamentary Archives, in order to enable the long-term survival and continued accessibility of Parliament’s digital records. They will lead on the monitoring, reporting, and control of risks to digital records held in Parliament’s Digital Repository.
Working with digital preservation staff and related roles in the Parliamentary Archives, they will advocate digital preservation awareness, become familiar with and communicate initiatives, standards in use or under development, and train staff to undertake basic digital preservation tasks themselves. They will provide supervision and support to Archives colleagues engaging with digital preservation work, such as ingests.
Whilst the post holder’s activities will largely be focussed on the maintenance and operation of the Digital Repository, there are other responsibilities and opportunities that will keep this role varied and challenging. These include supporting the development of ingest workflows and processes for data from new internal systems such as Microsoft Office 365, new digital projects and reprocurement exercises, and contributing to our online services provision.
This is a time of change for the Parliamentary Archives. The Archives Relocation Programme’s (ARP) Full Business Case has proposed that the House of Lords and the House of Commons will enter into an agreement with a partner organisation about the transfer of the Parliamentary records and the future provision of the Parliamentary Archive services.
There is no agreed date yet for the transfer, but over the next year this role will play an important role, working with Archives colleagues and ARP to ensure that Parliament’s digital collections are safeguarded throughout this move and will help to define Parliament’s requirements around access, preservation and transfer of digital records in the future.