Head of Sound Archive Technical Services, British Library

This is a fantastic opportunity to lead the British Library’s Technical Services experts, responsible primarily for the digitisation and preservation of the Library’s sound and moving image collections, and support for and maintenance of the underpinning audio-visual (AV) technology.

As the Head of Technical Services, you will be responsible for:

• Directing a team of managers of audio engineers, production coordinators, and workflow managers who digitise and preserve audio and video recordings to agreed quality standards and targets.
• Overseeing staff who provide essential equipment maintenance and staff and external training.
• Ensuring that technical support is provided for curatorial specialists in the acquisition, playback, and development of AV collections.
• Ensuring close working with other Library teams as necessary, including AV cataloguers, reading room services staff, exhibitions, and web publishing.
• Maintaining the department as an international centre of excellence in all aspects of AV preservation.

The successful candidate will have:

• Good people and project management skills.
• Significant professional experience working with audio-visual collections in a research library, archive, or similar environment.
• Good communication skills.
• Good technical knowledge of historic and current audio and video formats.
• A deep knowledge of internationally accepted archival principles as they apply to audio material.