The Sedgwick Museum has a temporary vacancy for someone with an interest in and understanding of managing museum collections in order to make them accessible to researchers and the public. This role provides the opportunity to gain experience working with a large internationally important collection and would suit someone in the early stages of their career.
The Sedgwick Museum's collections comprise more than two million fossils, rocks and minerals representing 300 years of collecting. The Museum welcomes more than 150,000 public visitors a year and delivers popular public programmes and outreach. The Museum's priorities include reaching a larger and more diverse public audience, increasing and enhancing the support we provide to researchers and students, and taking a lead in the regional and national museums sector. As part of the Museum's aspiration to better support collections-based research and engagement, the Realising the Potential project will contribute to the development of the Museum's Collections Research Centre. This will be based in the Museum's new purpose -built geological collections store, adjacent to the Museum's AG Brighton Building on Madingley Rise. The Museum is currently undertaking a major migration of its rock collections (approximately 12,000 drawers, 400,000 specimens) from the Atlas Building at High Cross, Cambridge to this new facility. The Realising the Potential Project Assistant will be part of the team carrying out this relocation, including documenting and packing specimens, transporting pallet loads of specimen drawers between buildings using a 3.5T box van with tail lift, and putting away drawers of rock specimens into the new racking. They will have a specific focus on preparing and managing the images of specimen drawers generated during the move, organising and cross referencing them to enable better remote access to the collections.
The collections migration project is being led by the Collections Manager with support from the Collections team and volunteers; it is estimated to take approximately 15 months. The Realising the Potential Project Assistant will join the team to provide additional assistance with the migration and to manage the digital outputs of the project (storage location data and images). Through the Realising the Potential Project the successful applicant will have opportunities to contribute to public engagement and advocacy through tours, events and social media. Applicants should have a good image processing skills and an understanding of using spreadsheets to record and manipulate data.
Applicants should enjoy working collaboratively and flexibly as part of a team but also be able to work independently with minimum supervision, taking responsibility and initiative where required, and be able to prioritise and comfortably adapt to changing circumstances and requirements.