Digitisation Officer Mycology

Contract start date June 2016
Contract end date June 2017

This is an exciting opportunity to become a member of the Digital Collections Unit of the Science Directorate. The team is responsible for the creation and curation of data and digital images representing Kew’s world class collections of plant and fungal specimens, making data widely accessible to researchers and the general public via on-line portals including Kew’s own online Herbarium and Fungarium Catalogues, JSTOR Global Plants, GBIF and Europeana.

The successful candidate will enable Kew to continue to digitise our collection of fungal specimens, starting with those fungi posing the greatest risk to the UK natural and cultivated flora.

An estimated 1.25 million specimens of dried fungi are housed in the Fungarium at Kew and is one of the oldest, largest, and most important mycological reference collections in the world. However, the wealth of information held in the Fungarium collection, including data on the distribution of the fungi and their host relationships, is still held within our collection cupboards and largely unavailable to researchers worldwide.

The successful candidate will be based in the Fungarium at Kew digitising fungi on the UK Plant Health Risk Register and on genera known to be broadly pathogenic, such as rusts and smuts. The post holder will capture images of collection labels from a minimum of 10,000 specimens and will assist with modifying and developing efficient digitisation workflows.

It is expected that interviews will be held on the week commencing 30th May