Wellcome-funded Archive of Tomorrow seeks Web Archivists

Digital Preservation Coalition; Oxford, Cambridge, City of Edinburgh; On-site; GBP 40,000 - 60,000; Full time

Job description

Wellcome-funded Archive of Tomorrow seeks Web Archivists

Date: 22 November 2021

Location: Oxford / Cambridge / Edinburgh

Type: Fixed Term

The Wellcome-funded Archiving of Tomorrow project is recruiting three part-time Web Archivists to support collection building and research engagement.

An exciting new project led by the National Library of Scotland, with partners the Bodleian Libraries at Oxford University, Cambridge University Library (the UL), and the Edinburgh University Library, has secured funding from the Wellcome Trust to archive and explore online resources about health information, including the Covid-19 pandemic.

Titled ‘The Archive of Tomorrow: Health Information and Misinformation in the UK Web Archive’, the project will preserve and provide research access to 10,000 websites relating to health information (from official and unofficial sources). It will develop this collection to enable more health research using the UK Web Archive.

Each of the Web Archivists will work closely with the parallel posts through shared tasks and virtual meetings. They will also work closely with project team members based at the National Library of Scotland. The Web Archivist at the Bodleian Libraries will sit in the Archives & Modern manuscripts team, located at its dedicated Special Collections facility, the Weston Library. The Web Archivist at Cambridge University Library will sit in the Digital Preservation team. The Web Archivist at Edinburgh University Library will be based in the Centre for Research Collections but will also spend some time on-site at the National Library of Scotland.

Along with building the collection of web-based materials, the Web Archivists will also contribute to setting up and testing new processes for web archiving, participate in a research network that includes a broad range of researchers and practitioners, as well as take part in user research to better understand researchers’ use of health-related materials published online and web archives more broadly.

For informal enquiries about the role at Cambridge University Library, please contact Caylin Smith at [e-mail].

For informal enquiries about the role at Edinburgh University Library, please contact Sara Day Thomson at [e-mail].