Volunteering with BCRA
BCRA relies almost entirely for volunteers for its operations. 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.
Publications Sales Officer
This note dated December 2021. Revised March 2026
This post is currently filled. But this job description will be useful for anybody
wishing to volunteer in the future, should a vacancy arise. The post covers the management and
execution of all tasks related to the supply of publications to our 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 or monitored drop-off point 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 the BCRA secretary — see BCRA: Contacting Us
Current Vacancy : IT Support
This note dated December 2021. Revised March 2026
We are seeking further people to join BCRA's IT team. 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, which means finding volunteers that are suitably qualified to meet many of the points
below.
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.
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 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 when 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. This workload will not fall to you alone, unless everyone
else is away caving.
- ...knowledge of ISPconfig (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
- ... understand how to use an FTP app.
- ... have some knowledge of Sympa, phpBB, keePass (or are confident about
learning)
- ... are familiar with Windows, 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 mailing 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.
