Volunteering with BCRA
BCRA relies almost entirely for volunteers for its operations, as does the British Caving
Association, of which BCRA is a constituent body. One of the largest volunteering operations is
our annual conference Hidden Earth at which over a hundred people offer their help in
manning reception, staffing the bar, chairing the lecture sessions, and providing technical
support for the lectures and events. But there are plenty of other tasks that need doing as well.
If you are interested in some BCRA projects, please read on.
Click/Tap a link or scroll on down.
Current Vacancy : Publications Sales
We are seeking a volunteer to
join our Publications team to assist with the despatch of our books to customers. The
main tasks are...
- Holding stock of BCRA Cave Studies booklets, and our larger A4 books, such as the
"Caves and Karst of the Yorkshire Dales" series.
- Packaging and posting BCRA book orders, both domestic, overseas and (occasionally)
trade orders.
- Dealing with customs documentation for overseas orders.
- Specifying packaging requirements and ordering stock of packaging.
Other tasks include...
- Answering queries from customers.
- Accounting for the stock using BCRA's online stock register; modifying the register
after each disposal.
- Transporting of stock to and from BCRA event venues and managing the sale of items at
events.
You will need...
- ... to respond swiftly to any orders received. We try to operate a swift
service because this is what is expected by online shoppers these days. The volume of sales is not
high but it increases at Christmas.
- ... a warm and dry storage area to hold several large boxes of books and
packaging materials.
- ... access to a Post Office. We usually use Royal Mail for inland shipping. You
can print labels online, provided your kitchen scales are accurate, but you will still need access
to a Post Office as we need a proof-of-postage certificate.
- ... access to a parcels collection point. For overseas shipping we use a
parcels courier, so you will need access to a collection point. Overseas orders also need customs
documents to be prepared online.
If you can help then please contact David Gibson at our publications-admin address
— see BCRA: Contacting Us
Current Vacancy : IT Support
We are seeking a
volunteer to help with IT support. None of the tasks listed below will fall to you
alone, but we do need to develop a long-term "succession" plan for IT support.
High-priority tasks that require someone to respond "as soon as possible"
include...
- Approving postings to our Mailman lists and phpBB forums.
- Monitoring our public-facing web server and re-booting it when necessary.
- Dealing with email issues and maintaining our email-forwarding settings in
cPanel.
Other tasks that require a "timely" but not "urgent" response include...
- Responding to enquiries by BCRA officers regarding the operation of the web site and
their email accounts.
- Maintaining our Mailman mailing lists and phpBB operations; issuing passwords,
updating access lists and so on.
- Maintaining our KeePass app.
- Maintaining various bespoke software operations on our web site. (Many of our web
pages are dynamically-generated via PHP routines and flat-file databases, and these need updating
from time to time - these include the seminars page, our
bookshop, our bibliograph pages (e.g. see C&KS) and others.
- Advising BCRA officers who report problems using the web server or email.
You will need...
- ... to respond urgently to the high-priority tasks.This means that you will
need to have frequent access to the Internet during working hours, including daytimes at weekends.
In particular, our web server can become unresponsive for various reasons, which requires swift
intervention in the form of a re-boot. (You will be alerted to this problem via an SMS message).
This workload will not fall to you alone, unless everyone else is away caving.
- ...knowledge of cPanel (or are confident about learning)
It would be helpful if you also...
- ... have at least a rudimentary understanding of how a virtual server operates
and is configured
- ... are willing to work closely with BCA's IT team, which provides BCRA's web
server
- ... understand how to use an FTP app.
- ... have some knowledge of Mailman, phpBB, keePass (or are confident about
learning)
- ... are familiar with Windows 10, because the BCRA officers who ask you for
advice will mostly be users of this OS.
The above description might seem rather prescriptive, but what it really means is that
we are looking for someone who can "hit the ground running", and work without close supervision.
At the moment, we are not specifically asking for someone to write and maintain web
pages but there are several other areas where we would like assistance, which include...
- Advising on upgrading our systems. Some of our systems are old and clunky. If
there are more modern, more easily maintainable solutions, should we be adopting them? For
example, are Mailman lists the best way to run bulk emails? How can we use Google docs (or
similar) to manage field meetings?
- A "Submission Management" package for Cave & Karst Science
- A "Copyright Agreement Registration" package for all of our publications
- Registering our internal DOIs with the official DOI body
Read further information on the items listed
above.
If you can help then please contact David Gibson — see BCRA: Contacting Us
Project : Selling via Amazon
We would like to sell some of our publications via Amazon. We are seeking someone who can
manage this project largely unsupervised — in other words someone who can "hit the ground
running" rather than someone who "just wants to help". You would be responsible for setting up and
managing our account at Amazon, arranging for all shipments of correctly bar-coded stock to
Amazon, and reporting regularly to BCRA Council.
Working in the library
If you are interested in working in the British Caving Library and helping with scanning
or cataloging, please contact Jenny Potts — see BCRA: Contacting
Us
Field meetings and seminars
If you would like to help to organise a field meeting or seminar, please contact us
— or perhaps you have an idea for running your own field meeting? If so, please see our
Field Meetings Guidelines. Please contact John Gunn with
any enquiries — see BCRA: Contacting Us.
