Cataloguer, Will Self Born Digital Archive

4 days ago

Saint Pancras, Greater London, United Kingdom The British Library Full time £28,119 - £30,000 per year

Contractual hours

36

Basis

Full time

Job category/type

Cataloguing & Metadata

Date posted

10/11/2025

Job reference

R

Location: St Pancras

Contract: Fixed term (22 months)

Hours: Full time (36 hours)

Grade: C

Salary: £28,119 per annum

About the role

This is an exciting opportunity to be part of a ground-breaking project to catalogue a major born-digital archive at the British Library.

The collection reflects the creative life and work of author Will Self and his wider milieu, containing drafts of major novels, correspondence, and non-fiction dating from the late 1980s to the mid-2010s. It is physically comprised of 47 floppy-disks and 1 hard-drive taken from a desktop PC. The project aims to make the digital objects stored on these carriers available to researchers in the Reading Room for the first time, complementing the catalogue of paper material which is already available.

The successful applicant will work with the Digital Lead Curator (Contemporary Archives and Manuscripts) to create archival descriptions of the digital objects in the archive, develop workflows to better understand the Library's born-digital archival holdings, and contribute to learning and upskilling for cataloguing colleagues in this area.

About us

We are the national library of the UK and we are here for everyone. Our shelves hold over 170 million items – a living collection that gets bigger every day. Although our roots extend back centuries, we aim to collect everything published in the UK today, tomorrow and far into the future. Our trusted experts care for this collection and open it up for everyone to spark new discoveries, ideas and to help people do incredible things.

What we can offer you

  • A competitive salary.
  • A fantastic pension scheme with minimum employer contributions of 28.97% (this may be higher dependent on grade).
  • Flexible working hours, with the ability to take up to 5 days flexi leave in a 3-month period.
  • 25 days holiday.
  • Full details of employee benefits can be found on our Careers: Benefits
  • This role qualifies for a digital allowance.

Closing date: 28 November 2025

Interview date: 09 December 2025

We are unable to provide sponsorship under the UK Skilled Worker visa for this role.

We particularly welcome applications from Black, Asian, Mixed Race and other ethnically diverse candidates and disabled candidates. We would like to increase the representation of these groups within The British Library to ensure our workforce is as diverse as the public that we serve. Creating an inclusive workplace is the core of our business and a way to engage the diversity of thought that is essential to achieve our aims.

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