Digitisation Co-ordinator

Full-time permanent post, based in Edinburgh

Salary £28,201 (pay award pending) plus civil service pension, generous annual holiday entitlement and other benefits

The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh is one of the world’sleading scientific botanic gardens, holding knowledge gained over centuries that the world needs today. All known life depends on plants and fungi. It is our mission to explore, conserve and explain the world of plants for a better future. We know that biodiversity loss and climate change are threatening thousands of plants with extinction. Through cutting edge science, conservation, and education, we are helping to save them. Our four Scottish gardens – Benmore, Dawyck, Logan and ‘The Botanics’ in Edinburgh – attract over a million visitors every year. Together, these gardens comprise one of the richest plant collections on earth. As a registered Scottish charity, the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh is funded principally by the Scottish Government –but as an organisation, we are very much global. We are taking positive action for plants and people around the world – from local communities in Scotland to over 40 countries overseas.

We are looking to recruit a Digitisation Co-ordinator into the Herbarium team in our Science division to support the delivery of our strategic ambition to digitise RBGE’s preserved collections. The Herbarium has digitised nearly one third of the three million specimens in the collection and you’ll play an active role in the expansion of the digitisation programme.

Working within our dynamic Preserved Collections team you’ll be helping to coordinate the digitisation programme, and providing technical expertise for digitisation equipment, workflows, and data management. You’ll also provide line management for a small team of digitisers, support our online digitisation volunteers, and contribute to digitisation itself.

As part of the role you’ll help deliver training and supervision to interns and volunteers, as well as help develop web resources for a citizen science work programme.

Applicants should have excellent people skills, ideally with some previous experience in managing a small team. You’ll need to be able to work independently in a busy environment, and a capacity for meticulous and sensitive handling of delicate specimens in a sustained, careful, repetitive work will be essential, as will an ability to assess image quality critically.

You will need to have good botanical or taxonomic knowledge, and hold a degree or have equivalent knowledge in botany or a related subject. Proficiency with databases such as Specify and imaging software such as CaptureOne and Adobe Photoshop is also desirable. You’ll need an ability to work with computer languages: familiarity with SQL, PHP or Python is desirable.

To apply, please email recruitment@rbge.org.uk with:

• your CV
• a covering letter outlining the skills, knowledge and experience you’d bring to the post

Closing date: 17:00 (BST) on Monday 16October 2023

If you haven’t heard from us within 2 weeks of the closing date, please assume your application hasn’t been successful on this occasion. No recruitment agencies please.