Freelance Metadata​/Documentation Specialist Antarctic Heritage Trust

Vacancy for Freelance Metadata / Documentation Specialist with UK Antarctic Heritage Trust

Remote, with the option to work from our Cambridge office during contracted days

£12,600, inclusive of VAT and expenses

Fixed Term

About the project

The UK Antarctic Heritage Trust (UKAHT) is the principal organisation in the UK dedicated to advancing conservation, culture and education for heritage in Antarctica.

UKAHT has been collecting data and media for 30 years to support our work conserving, protecting and advocating for the tangible and intangible heritage of the Antarctic sites in our care. This includes landscape and building imagery, records of objects and personal items, and gifted media from those who lived and worked on site.

In recent years we have also embarked upon the digitisation of our heritage sites and monuments. This data has been collected through a range of methodologies:
Terrestrial laser scan, photogrammetry and SLAM scan.

This grant funded project by the Heritage Science Data Service (HSDS) is an opportunity to review and improve our current metadata practices and standards, and to make a portion of this unique digital collection publicly accessible to support scientific heritage research. The primary datatypes and records you will be enhancing are several 3D datasets with a range of laser scan files and photogrammetric images, in addition to a smaller portion of curated 2D media.

About the role

We are seeking someone who is excited to lead on the enhancement and preparation of the rich digital data relating to the heritage we care for in Antarctica and make it accessible and available to a global audience.

You will be a self‑motivated freelance metadata / documentation specialist. You will join in discussions with our XR Producer, Head of Buildings and Conservation and others to understand our collection. Through discussions and collection familiarisation you’ll be well placed to help us achieve our current and future digital documentation ambitions by producing a strategic set of sustainable ‘best practice’ recommendations and collection‑specific metadata templates.

You’ll undertake practical work, applying these metadata recommendations and standards to a limited amount of data, focusing on select 3D datasets for HSDS submission and a curated number of supporting 2D media.

In this role you will have a singular opportunity to shape UKAHT’s long‑term digital documentation and metadata management processes, providing a strong foundation for ongoing metadata improvements and increased opportunities for future data use and public engagement.

Scope and deliverables

As a time limited grant funded project you will work with UKAHT and HSDS to co‑scope the project within the available time and budget to ensure it is feasible, provides good value and produces a high‑quality metadata submission for the HSDS repository.

Areas within scope and approximate % of project deliverables are:

• Collaboration and Strategic Recommendations - 15%
• Project Planning and Preparation - 15%
• Metadata Enhancement 3D Datasets and HSDS Submission - 50%

We are keen to work with someone who has practical experience in diverse metadata and digital documentation or collections management within a museum or heritage setting. It is desirable you’ll have experience of working with metadata of large datasets and batch data i.e. terrestrial laser scans or photogrammetric capture. Experience of Heritage BIM would be advantageous.

As an accredited museum with an on‑site artefact collection and a large media library, it is also desirable that you have familiarity with archival collections and Spectrum guidance, and/or digital asset management.

We’d like to talk to those who have experience or training in managing metadata or…