About Us
Royal Museums Greenwich is a collection of diverse historical sites. The sites are the National Maritime Museum, Cutty Sark, the Royal Observatory, and the Queen's House. Each of these sites has a unique identity and a common purpose to serve our communities, through sharing our collections and expertise. We are a place to explore the sea, space, art and history, and our strategy 'Charting Our Course' puts people at the core of its success.
The Role
The Caird Library and Archive, which was re-awarded Accredited Archive status in 2025, holds over 2 million items which are held across archives, charts, maps, manuscripts collections; and a library collection of 100,000 modern printed and rare books, periodicals, and electronic resources. These collections illustrate the history of exploration, empire, navigation, and maritime endeavour. The Added Skill role plays a significant role in supporting remote access to the collections held by the Caird Library and Archive, by copying items for researchers unable to visit us in person.
Key responsibilities include producing research quality scans of library and archive material (manuscripts, rare books etc.) using the dedicated camera equipment in the Caird Library and using Adobe Lightroom to process the images for dispatch as single PDF files, ensuring all copy protection watermarks are applied as appropriate.
The successful candidate will be educated to A-Level or equivalent, have a working knowledge of databases and of general ICT packages, including MacOS, and demonstrate effective communication skills, with the confidence to deal with members of the public, academics, and specialist groups. A strong commitment to customer care and high standards of service provision, and the ability to work independently without direct supervision (after a period of training) are also essential for this role.
The time commitment is one day per week, between Tuesday and Friday, when the Reading Room is in operation. The role is expected to continue for 6 months and the postholder should be able to commit to this length of time. A review of progress will be conducted after 3 months.
This is an internal only vacancy for staff employed in Band 8 as a Visitor and Sales Assistant or Bookings and Customer Service Coordinator at Royal Museums Greenwich.
Please note that this role cannot be undertaken if you only work weekends or as a lunch cover due to the opening times of the Reading Room.
Interviews are scheduled for Monday 13 October.
Added Skill Opportunities
An added skill is when you undertake a part-time, temporary role with different responsibilities to your current role, during some of the hours you would usually be doing your regular work, with the aim of it being a development opportunity for Visitor and Sales Assistants and Bookings and Customer Service Coordinators. You do not work more hours than your current contracted role, and your salary remains the same.
A member of staff can only undertake one added skill at any one time, and you must have passed your probationary period to be eligible for this role.
In your application, please include why you are interested in the role and what relevant experience you could bring to it. We encourage you to read the full job description and person specification attached before submitting your application.
We recommend you speak to your line manager before applying for an added skill.
EDI
Diversity and inclusion are integral to our work at Royal Museums Greenwich, as we are a museum for everyone. We want to foster a spirit of inclusion, collaborative working, innovation, and valuing people as individuals whose lives have been shaped by different experiences. Therefore, we welcome applications from everyone.
We actively work with Disability Confident scheme and ask that you let us know if there are any reasonable adjustments you need or things you would like us to know during the interview process, which may include being provided the interview questions in advance, requiring a step free interview space, that you are eye-contact avoidant, or having the interview questions in a written format or additional time in timed tests, interviews or other assessment activities.