Content Specialist, Archivist

Location: St Pancras
Contract: Fixed term until 31 October 2026
Hours: Full time (36 hours)
Grade: B
Salary: £34,608 per annum

About the role
The British Library leads and collaborates in growing the world's knowledge base. We are engaged in a major partnership with the Qatar Foundation and the Qatar National Library to digitise and make available material relating to the history of the Gulf and Arabic scientific manuscripts. We are a multi-disciplinary programme that includes retrieval, conservation, content specialists, curators and cataloguers, translation, rights clearance, imaging, and workflow staff.

The partnership is currently in its fourth phase. We will be delivering an additional 675,000 searchable and contextualised digital images, made freely available via the dedicated portal at www.qdl.qa and selected from the library's archive collections, including the India Office Records and Private Papers, Sound, Maps and Arabic Manuscript collections.

This is an exciting opportunity to be part of the Programme's cataloguing team. You will be responsible for cataloguing material from the India Office Records and Private Papers (IOR&PP) relating to the history of the Gulf, writing blogs to contextualise the material and present it to new audiences, and contributing to project outreach, including participating in tours and show and tells.

You will have a postgraduate archive qualification or equivalent experience, knowledge and experience of archival cataloguing and relevant standards, palaeography skills, the ability to work with accuracy and attention to detail, the ability to work to deadlines, teamwork and strong communication and IT skills.

For further information, please refer to the Job Profile.

About us
We are the national library of the UK and we are here for everyone. Our shelves hold over 170 million items in 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 page.

Closing date: 31 August 2025
Interview date: 22 September 2025

If you have any questions, please contact: [email protected]
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.

Museum Website: https://ce0752li.webitrent.com/ce0752li_webrecruitment/wrd/run/ETREC179GF.open?WVID=5071482BMD