Jennifer Pearson

Digital Archivist @HSBC

London, GB

I am a member of HSBC\'s Global Archives team (Group Brand), which collects, manages and communicates HSBC’s heritage and archives in support of the bank’s purpose, values and strategy. We preserve the corporate memory of the organisation, and drive engagement with employees, clients, shareholders, dignitaries, regulators and other stakeholders. We provide a wide-range of internal and public-facing services to users across the globe, and our archives form one of the most international corporate collections in the world.As digital archivist, I provide professional expertise, stakeholder advocacy and creative problem-solving to support HSBC’s innovative digital archives programme and history website. I work with the digital archives team to manage our Preservica-based digital preservation system, ensuring that the digital preservation policy is implemented across our entire repository. As the digital preservation system also serves as the complete global catalogue and repository for valuable digital assets, other key aspects of my role include: metadata management, normalisation and enhancements, which are primarily achieved with bespoke Python scripts for updates and reporting; and ingesting of content, including bulk ingest via Python scripts. As the team’s expert in leveraging Python scripts for enhanced system functionality and efficiencies, I proactively identify and implement innovative catalogue improvements that have wide impact for our archives team, making their day-to-day usage of the digital archive system much more efficient and intuitive. Significant time-savings, on the order of thousands of work hours, are achieved by processing bulk tasks with scripts, rather than repetitive manual updates. In addition to my digital tasks, I also support the wider archives team with collections management, cataloguing, accessioning, and curating & publishing exhibitions on our public-facing History website.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Ph.D., Chemistry (advisor: R.R. Schrock, Nobel Prize 2005)

UCL

M.A., Archives and Records Management (Distinction)

The University of British Columbia

B.Sc. (Honours), Chemistry