Job Vacancies

[David Gibson]

BCRA relies heavily on the efforts of its volunteers and there is, unfortunately, no payment attached to any of these jobs.

Cave Studies Editor
BCRA publishes an occasional series of booklets – the Cave Studies Series. For many years, Dave Judson was the Series editor. Dave has now stepped down and we are seeking a replacement. We do not want to be too prescriptive in what we are asking for and, rather than an Editor, it may be that we are seeking a Project Manager. If you have book-editing skills and are interested in managing book publication projects, please read the description at http://bcra.org.uk/pub/cs_editor.html. We are looking for someone who is willing to take on a senior role that involves both managing the projects and doing most of the editing and layout work. Needless to say, there is no payment for this post.

Publicity Manager
We need someone to handle BCRA publicity. Specifically we need someone who can be relied on to keep the various online diaries, web forums and social media sites up-to-date with BCRA events. At present this is done on a slightly haphazard basis and we would like to recruit someone who can be relied on to approach the task promptly, imaginatively, and more comprehensively. (E.g. monitoring and responding to social media postings; creating content from the brief notes you will be issued with by Council members and possibly generating publicity on a wider front).

E-book Project Manager
We are looking for someone with the appropriate skills to manage the conversion of some of our web and printed book content to an E-book format such as EPUB. Additionally, we are wondering whether our PDF content should be converted to HTML for reading online, since PDF is not really an ideal online format, especially for the newer type of Internet-enabled devices. Possibly these tasks can be automated by running a conversion algorithm on a Postscript file? A third aspect of this project would be to present our Cave & Karst Science Explained texts in an appropriate e-format, with illustrations. (Follow the yellow stars on the Covers page at http://bcra.org.uk/pub/candks/covers.html for info on Cave & Karst Science Explained). This project will clearly need to move in whatever direction a volunteer wants to take it but – as a starting point – we “think” we need to start looking at EPUB format and “file converters”.

Workshop ‘Initiators’
BCRA would like to further develop its programme of field meetings to include ‘workshops’ on Cave Science – field meetings with a practical bias. We are looking for people to ‘initiate’ this, by suggesting ideas and people to contact, and to help twist a few arms. As with all volunteer-led projects, this must inevitably go in the direction in which a volunteer steers it, so if you would like to so something even vaguely along these lines, please contact us.

Council Members
You do not need to be a member of BCRA Council to fill any of the above posts, but it would probably help if you were to attend Council meetings (usually in March, June and October at the British Caving Library near Buxton); and it would be good for us to recruit new Council members from time to time. As a Council member you would be a trustee of the charity. If you think you might be interested, please contact the chairman or secretary.