The National Archives offers a variety of career opportunities. Here, some of our staff talk about their roles and experiences.
Read testimonials about what it’s like to work in the digital directorate.
Melinda Haunton – Programmes Manager, Archives Sector Development
I’m responsible for Archive Service Accreditation, our management standard for the wider archives sector. I lead on assessing applications from archive services seeking to meet the standard, and I run training for archivists on how they can use Accreditation to develop their services.
I have a PhD in History and previously I taught undergraduate courses at several universities. Since joining The National Archives, I have trained to become a qualified archivist.
As a historian by training, I find it so satisfying to be working to preserve the nation’s written heritage, without which we would know so little about our past. I particularly enjoy visiting newly Accredited Archive Services to give them their awards and celebrate their success. Archivists round the country work hard and sometimes feel rather invisible. It’s great to be able to change that!
Rosalind Morris – Education Web Officer
I create online educational resources based on our collections for teachers to use in their classrooms. I also manage our Education social media, letting teachers know about what we have to offer: we’ve created a variety of materials, from themed collections of digital documents, ready-to-use lessons, topic sites for students, and short films for use in class.
Originally I studied for degrees in English and Comparative Literature and Medieval and Early Modern Studies. Then I completed my PGCE and taught English in Secondary schools. I’ve also been a freelance web designer.
The National Archives has an amazing atmosphere of interest and discovery: you never really know what you will be faced with when you open a box of documents. Seeing teachers benefit from the resources we make is incredibly rewarding. Opportunities to take part in projects and research outside of my regular role mean I can shape my professional development to suit me.
David Underdown – Senior Digital Archivist
I’m a digital archivist in the digital preservation team, dealing primarily with large digitisation projects such as the 1939 Registers or our First World War unit war diaries. I define technical specifications for the images, and create schemas for accompanying metadata. I also work on some transfers of born digital records from government departments, working to define system enhancements required to ingest a wider range of digital material. I write scripts using Python 3 to help prepare material for preservation. I’m also heavily involved in research work to create a risk model for our digital preservation using Bayesian networks.
My degree was in Maths; then I joined the IT department of a life and pensions company. I started at The National Archives as a database administrator and systems support engineer. From there I became involved in more of our digital preservation activities and realised it would be helpful to improve my understanding of the archivists’ role – and that I enjoyed that side of the work.
We face a broad range of challenges in digital archival practice: my technical background is just as important as some of the more traditional archival backgrounds of my colleagues. For example, we have to deal with understanding new data formats, and the huge volume of digital data that we are now beginning to receive.