Collections and Practicals Manager

This is an exciting opportunity to join one of the Schools in the Faculty of Science, providing discipline-specific support for academics and students in the School of Earth Sciences.

Whilst the role requires maintenance and organisation of the School’s collections, displays and map library, your role will be teaching support focused providing a high level of support to the academic and student community in the delivery of practicals. We envisage the breakdown of these activities will be 70% teaching lab support and 30% collection maintenance.

You must be able to plan and prioritise a busy and varied workload often working to tight deadlines. You will be an articulate and confident individual with excellent communication skills. A strong user care orientation and commitment to service quality is also required. Experience of working with academics or in higher education would be advantageous.

Responsibilities

To prepare laboratory classes by laying out and subsequently storing the minerals, rocks, thin-sections, fossils and maps as required by teaching staff and assist with the development of new teaching resources.
To maintain microscopes for use by staff and students; obtaining and storing spare parts ready for use.
To maintain and catalogue the Map Library and operate a system for the inspection and/or loan of maps to staff, students and outsiders.
To assist with the smooth running of the School’s in-house examinations.
To provide general AV maintenance support to School lecture rooms and teaching laboratories.
To maintain and organise the school's collections of rocks, minerals and fossils, to the standards laid down for a museum that is accredited under the national scheme operated by the Arts Council. It will also involve advising on the disposal and/or dispersal of research materials (books, papers, specimens etc.) left behind by departing staff and research workers, and to organise their dispersal to appropriate repositories.
To respond to enquiries and requests for loans from the school collections; to advise academic staff and research workers on the suitability of the material for teaching or research; to arrange and dispatch loans, or to host visiting researchers, as appropriate, when enquiries are made from outside the school. Book publishers and film companies frequently make requests to use specimens from the museum, or of images of them. Execution of these requests requires negotiation with regard to use of facilities, copyright and fees.
To maintain an on-line catalogue and website for the museum and teaching collections; to train and supervise volunteer labour to enter data; to monitor entries with reference to specialist literature in order to ensure consistency and correctness of the records. To control access to the collections by staff and students, according to policy agreed with the Head of School, and to monitor loans.
In association with the Photographer/Graphical Designer to produce material for the numerous display cases around the school, using materials from the collections and researching the background to provide informative exhibits which support the teaching programmes of the school, enhance learning experience for students, and provide a "shop-window" for the school's research and teaching for visitors and prospective students.
To control a small recurrent budget for museum and displays, supplemented by any income generated from right to use illustrations of (or to film) museum specimens; to control any income from museum grants.