Job purpose:
Building on our award-winning experience in the preservation of digital records we have developed a Digital Records Infrastructure (DRI) to sustain our rapidly increasing digital collection. This system preserves a huge range of digital material in a wide variety of formats.You will be leading a small team that liaises with staff across The National Archives and with other government departments including high-profile inquiries, to ensure that all digital material in The National Archives’ custody meets the standards required for ingest and preservation in DRI, ensuring the security and integrity of the record throughout the process.
The nature of the work undertaken means that you will be required to undergo Security Check clearance.
Roles and responsibilities:
Management of the transfer of born-digital and digitised records into the DRI, which includes:
• Agreeing with other departments within The National Archives (Advice & Records Knowledge, Information Management, Transfer & Access, Programmes & Strategy, Cataloguing & Taxonomy, Digitisation Services, Licensing and Systems Development) the priority for transfer of digital records
• Planning and the allocation of resources within the Digital Preservation department to ensure the delivery of priority projects
• Agreeing with the Data Protection Officer and FoI Centre any restrictions to be applied to this data and managing the metadata to ensure that they are applied
• Agreeing with Systems Development, Cataloguing & Taxonomy and ARK any delivery requirements and making sure that these are met
• Development, continuous improvement and day-to-day management of the processes involved in the complex processing required for born-digital records; providing guidance and support to the Digital Archivist and Digital Archiving Assistant, to ensure that the records and associated metadata can be successfully ingested into the DRI
• Working closely with the Digital Preservation Services Manager, you will have responsibility for the identification, evaluation and resolution of technical issues relating to the transfer and ingest processes by engaging with, and influencing both internal and external stakeholders
• Working with Licensing and Digitisation Services to ensure digital preservation requirements are accurately embedded in digitisation contracts, and that the data and metadata produced by subsequent digitisation projects meets the required standards for successful ingest and preservation
• Support the Head of Digital Preservation in procurement activities using iPOS
• Ensuring the records and metadata for legacy born-digital records meet the required standards for successful ingest into DRI, and subsequent presentation on Discovery by managing, implementing and maintaining the operational procedures around the preparation of records for ingest into DRI
Representing The National Archives at high level meetings with other memory institutions and digital preservation experts to agree standards and approaches to digital preservation
Management of the advice and guidance produced by the Digital Preservation team, which includes ensuring that the guidance available on the website is kept up-to-date and that the guidance produced complements that provided by other departments across the organisation
Line management of 1 member of the Digital Preservation operational team:
• Providing direction, support and technical guidance in relation to the programme of work
• Ensuring an efficient service is offered to stakeholders; using effective decision-making skills to manage the work of the team in response to changing priorities and deadlines
• Responsibility for ensuring that the team deliver against agreed targets
• Ensuring ongoing development of team members through training, on the job learning and other appropriate interventions