King's College London

About Us

The King’s community is dedicated to the service of society. King’s Strategic Vision 2029 sets out our vision for the future, shaped around five priority areas: educate to inspire and improve; research to inform and innovate; serve to shape and transform; a civic university at the heart of London; and an international community that services the world.

Our ambitious Education Strategy sets out the actions that we must take to transform how we teach, how and where our students learn and how we support them during their time with us.

Libraries & Collections comprises four departments: Education & Learning, Research & Impact, Service Design & Delivery, along with Business Operations. We are part of the Students & Education Directorate, which manages the student lifecycle from application to graduation and beyond.

This role is based in the Special Collections team, which is responsible for the development, management and promotion of our special collections. Our special collections comprise over 200,000 rare or unique items, ranging in date from the 15th century to the present day.

This is currently a hybrid role, based largely on campus but with some potential for limited home working.

About The Role

The purpose of the Library Assistant (Special Collections) is to support the operations and services of the Foyle Special Collections Library. This is a role in which you will be primarily working on-site.

This is an exciting opportunity for candidates looking to work with unique and distinctive collections that enhance teaching, learning and research and who wish to utilise their skills and expertise in service development and delivery. This is an opportunity to grow your skills in in rare books and printed special collections.

We encourage applications from candidates who have experience from both within and outside of the Higher Education sector where they can demonstrate the skills needed to succeed in this role.

All grade 3 staff are assigned a placement brief within a particular team but may be moved across to a different placement brief elsewhere within Libraries & Collections in order to support service needs or your development.

All Libraries & Collections staff are encouraged to take responsibility for their own performance and development, through agreeing clear objectives, maintaining professional awareness and reflecting on own performance. We expect all colleagues to role-model a positive, proactive, flexible and committed approach that encourages others.

You will be required to participate in frontline services as required, including contributing towards a rota for evening and weekend working.

This is a full time post (35 hours per week), and you will be offered an indefinite contract.

About You

To be successful in this role, we are looking for candidates to have the following skills and experience: 

Essential criteria

1. Relevant work experience and/or education: We think a wide range of different work and educational experiences could support you to be successful in this role. Relevant work experience might include work in a library, or other educational setting. Relevant educational experiences might include higher education in a related discipline, professional qualifications or other training 
2. Ability to work to a high level of accuracy and attention to detail 
3. Ability to work as part of a team in a fast-changing environment 
4. Commitment to personal accountability and continuous improvement, driving own professional development 
5. Commitment to equity, equality, diversity and inclusivity in your own learning and ways of working 
6. Experience of or proven interest in working with printed special collections 
7. Excellent oral and written communication skills 
8. Ability to carry heavy volumes and push laden trolleys 

Desirable criteria

1. Experience of working in a customer-oriented environment 
2. Ability to work under pressure and meet deadlines 
3. Experience of using library catalogues and resource discovery tools 

Full details of the role and the skills and experience required can be found in the attached job description which is provided on the next page.

Further Information

We pride ourselves on being inclusive and welcoming. We embrace diversity and want everyone to feel that they belong and are connected to others in our community. We are committed to working with our staff and unions on these and other issues, to continue to support our people and to develop a diverse and inclusive culture at King's. 

Please submit a supporting statement when applying for this vacancy, clearly setting out how you meet the essential criteria, as this is how we shortlist applications. If we receive a strong field of candidates, we may use the desirable criteria to choose our final shortlist, so please included your evidence against these where possible. 

To find out how our managers review your application, please take a look at our ‘How we Recruit’ pages. 

Interviews are due to be held in w/c 28 April 2025. 

This role does not meet the requirements of the Home Office and therefore we are not able to offer sponsorship for candidates who require the right to work in the UK.