Collections Assistant - Mineralogy & Petrology

Deadline: Sunday, September 11, 2022 - 00:00
Employer: Sedgwick Museum - University of Cambridge
Contract Duration: Fixed Term 12 Months
Contract Type: Full Time
Salary: £27,116-£31,406

The Sedgwick Museum has an opportunity for someone with good rock and mineral identification skills and an interest in working with museum collections to join our friendly team. The role is for one year initially with possible extension dependent on funding. They will play a key role in enabling researcher and student access to the Museum's internationally important petrology and mineralogy collections as well as making an important contribution to the ongoing migration of our petrological collections into a new purpose built store.

The Petrology Collection is currently housed on two sites in NW Cambridge, and comprises about 250,000 igneous and metamorphic rock thin sections and about 160,000 hand specimens, and an estimated 100,000 sedimentary rocks. The Mineral Collection comprises about 40,000 specimens, including 500 meteorites. These are currently covered by approximately 44,000 records on the Museum's Collections Management System. The Collections Assistant (Mineralogy and Petrology) will be part of the Collections team of 3 collections assistants and 4 temporary project staff. The current collections migration project involves a major relocation of the Petrology collections (approximately 12,000 drawers, 400,000 specimens) from the Atlas Building at High Cross, Cambridge to the Museum's new purpose-built Collections Research Centre on Madingley Rise. The move is led by the Collections Manager with support from the Collections team and is currently approximately 50% complete, with an estimated completion date in the summer of 2023.

The Collections Assistant (Mineralogy & Petrology) is responsible for providing petrological and mineralogical knowledge, assisting the Collections Manager with the identification and cataloguing of specimens, organisation of museum stores, processing of incoming and outgoing loans and enabling access by researchers, students and members of the public. During the collections migration project they will play a key role in identifying specimens and assisting with their migration into the new store. There will be opportunities to develop skills in public and stakeholder engagement both face-to-face, by giving tours and other activities, and online through blogs and social media. The person appointed will have experience and understanding of Earth science and petrology, gained through training and/or work experience. They will be confident identifying rocks and minerals in hand specimen and thin section, and ideally will have an understanding of working with museum collections.

Fixed-term: The funds for this post are available for 1 years in the first instance.

Applications are welcome from internal candidates who would like to apply for the role on the basis of a secondment from their current role in the University.

Interviews will be held on Monday 19 September. Once an offer of employment has been accepted, the successful candidate will be required to undergo a health assessment.