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.

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.

About the role:

Open Research is an innovative and growing area of service provision. The purpose of the Library Assistant role within the Subscriptions & Access wing of the team, is to carry out a range of administrative tasks to provide users with access to a range of print and electronic resources for their education, teaching and research needs.

This is an exciting opportunity for candidates looking to work with subscriptions, who wish to utilise their skills in administrative tasks for the efficient procurement of resources. This is an opportunity to grow your skills in handling print library resources, inter-library loans, updating metadata, and collating statistical data to aid evaluation of subscriptions. The main focus of the role will require to work on interlending and document delivery,  data checks, with spreadsheets and library resources metadata, and would particularly suit those who enjoy working methodically with good attention to detail.

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 the role:

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 educational experiences might include higher education in a related discipline, professional qualifications or other training.
2. Ability to work as part of a team to achieve shared goals
3. Ability to work to a high level of accuracy and attention to detail
4. Excellent organisation and time management skills
5. Excellent oral and written communication skills
6. Experience in positively and proactively dealing with routine problems
7. Being comfortable with technology such as Microsoft Office and databases
8. Commitment to personal accountability and continuous improvement

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. Some knowledge of information resources provision and discovery, such as databases, eBooks, big journal deals and transformative agreements, access to e-resources

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:

At King’s, we believe that the diversity of our community and a culture that is welcoming, open, inclusive and collaborative, are great strengths of the university. The Equality Act of 2010 protects the rights of our students and staff and provides a framework to fulfil our duties to eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation and in addition, to advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations between those who share a protected characteristic and those who do not. At times, this will include balancing rights and beliefs that can feel in tension.

We are committed to free speech and to academic freedom, believing that our foundational purpose as a university, is to create spaces where a wide range of ideas, including ideas that are controversial, can be discussed and debated, and where members of our community can express lawful views without fear of intimidation, harassment or discrimination.

When engaging in the robust exchange of ideas, we ask that our community is mindful of our Dignity at King’s guidance.

Please submit a supporting statement when applying for this vacancy, as well as a CV, 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 include your evidence against these where possible.

We reserve the right to close adverts early due to the volume of applications we receive. While the closing date may change, all adverts will close at 23:59 to allow sufficient time for applications to be submitted on that day.

We encourage you to apply at the earliest opportunity to avoid disappointment as once we have closed a vacancy you will be unable to submit your application.

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

Interviews are due to be held during w/commencing 29th June 2026.