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 is a key division within the Directorate of Students and Education at King’s College London, supporting the institution’s teaching, learning, research and administrative activity. Led by the Director, Lis Hannon, Libraries & Collections has four departments: Education & Learning, Research & Impact, Service Design & Delivery and Business Operations.

Within Libraries & Collections, we aspire to be leaders in enabling access to knowledge and information fundamental to this vision. Developments in digital education, e-research and AI are transforming our services. Our Open Library strategy outlines our ambitious plans and how they contribute to student success and research excellence.  We are part of the Students & Education Directorate, which manages the student lifecycle from application to graduation and beyond.

This role is based within the Service Design & Delivery department that is responsible for providing services and spaces for the entire King’s community by: providing spaces, physical & digital, that are fit for a '21st Century Library' and ensuring they are managed to maximise impact; providing systems and technology that underpin and enhance service delivery; maximising the availability of our lending collections and delivering first-line services that are welcoming and make the library accessible to all; ensuring customer insight is captured, analysed and fed into the design of our services.

About the role:

Library Assistants contribute to the work of the Frontline Services team by supporting the delivery and operation of our first-line enquiry service across Libraries & Collections; enabling users to access our resources, services and facilities and maintaining library spaces. Library Assistants act as an identifiable and welcoming presence for our users and have an understanding of the breadth of the library’s work in order to respond, signpost or refer enquiries effectively and promote our services.

This is an exciting opportunity for candidates interested in supporting delivery of evaluation and design of a service, and who wish to utilise their skills and expertise in Library stock and circulation tasks, customer service, and admin duties. This is an opportunity to grow your skills in data gathering, project work, adapting to new technologies and systems, and reacting flexibly to new working practices.   

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 customer-facing service. Relevant educational experiences might include higher education in a related discipline, professional qualifications or other training
2. Excellent organisation and time management skills
3. Ability to work to a high level of accuracy and attention to detail
4. Ability to work as part of a team in a fast-changing environment
5. Commitment to personal accountability and continuous improvement, driving own professional development
6. Excellent oral and written communication skills
7. Experience in positively and proactively dealing with routine problems
8. Strong interpersonal skills, with the ability to effectively question and understand user needs and enquiries
9. Ability to work effectively and proactively with other teams and stakeholders

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
4. Experience of or proven interest in working within higher education environment
5. Working knowledge of IT within an office environment and the ability to learn new systems

Downloading a copy of our Job Description

Full details of the role and the skills, knowledge and experience required can be found in the Job Description document, provided at the bottom of the page. This document will provide information of what criteria will be assessed at each stage of the recruitment process.

Further information:

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 will review your application, please take a look at our ‘How we Recruit’ pages.