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.

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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.