Library Champions are students acting as an important link between students and Libraries & Collections. Through engaging with the work of the libraries they help bring the views of students across the university into decision making, and ensure that their needs are understood in the development of library services, resources and spaces.
Depending on the opportunities they choose, Library Champions can gain valuable experience to add to their CV, receive vouchers in return for their time and insight, or earn a King’s Experience Award.
Opportunities will include:
- Collaborating with library staff on projects to improve our services, collections or spaces.
- Taking part in user experience research or focus groups.
Projects confirmed for 2022-23 include:
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What makes a good reading list?
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Students will work with library staff to create case studies demonstrating how they use reading lists, their impact on students’ wellbeing, and what makes a good reading list. We anticipate students will take part in three workshops (four hours in total) between October 2022 and February 2023.
Benefits include training on how to write case studies and an opportunity to influence how reading lists are created within students’ faculties. Optional additional activities include presenting the outcomes to faculties and a conference at King’s.
An excellent opportunity to build your influencing and presenting experience! You may also like to use this experience to gain the King’s Experience Award “Careers 360°.”
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Inclusive Information Literacy
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Students will work with library staff to develop an action plan to improve inclusivity in our information literacy teaching. Library Champions would have a direct role in co-authoring the action plan and deciding on priorities. We anticipate students will take part in three workshops (six hours in total) between January and March 2023.
Students will gain experience in communicating ideas, shaping procedures, prioritisation, and working with stakeholders, and may like to use this experience to gain the King’s Experience Award “Careers 360°.”
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We are very keen to include a wide range of voices in the Library Champions programme, and particularly welcome students from backgrounds underrepresented in academia. You do not need to be a regular library user to get involved.
Sign-up to become a Library Champion for 2022-23.
If you have any questions, please contact: ML-LC-ServiceDevelopment@kcl.ac.uk
Looking back - Library Champions 2021-22
From November 2021 to April 2022, Library Champions contributed a range of activities, details of which can be found on the Library Loop blog. They included:
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Improving how we help users in our libraries
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Students took part in focus groups and user experience (UX) research, then became UX researchers themselves, interviewing peers at three library sites.
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Become an Open Access Champion
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Students received special training on Open Access resources and its benefits to their studies, surveyed their peers and feeding back to inform future Open Access teaching at King’s libraries.
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Supporting Inclusive Education through Reading Lists
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Students collaborated with library staff on refining Library & Collections’ (L&C) methodology from previous Library Champions project, resulting in online how-to guidance from L&C available for all King’s students and staff.
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Online Exhibition - Vanguards & Trailblazers
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Students created an online exhibition of people from in and outside King's that inspire them, raising student awareness for discovery beyond the reading list and over-represented academic demographics.
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Looking back - Library Champions 2020-21
In 2020-21, students participated across three themes:
Inclusive library spaces
We want our library spaces to be inspiring and welcoming to our diverse student community. Our starting idea is to create an inclusive initiative that would display images of works of art in the libraries by artists chosen by students. Those artists could include students themselves if they were happy to share their works in reaction to a particular space. We hope to create a conversation between the cultural references of our current spaces and the cultural reference points of King’s students.
Inclusive library spaces
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Decolonising our collections
Work with Libraries & Collections on embedding a decolonised approach to our collections with projects which explore and critique how we represent, promote and engage with our areas of collection strength and how we develop and grow our collections. Identifying areas of our collection which require a critical approach/repositioning/reappraisal or further development and investment.
Developing our services
The services offered by Libraries & Collections are regularly examined, evaluated and improved. Challenges posed by operating during the pandemic have seen rapid developments in a number of areas of the service and there is potential for further work to improve on these or meet emerging needs. Working with members of the library team you would help progress this thinking about how we can improve. This might include use of UX (User Experience) techniques to gather data, looking at analysing and reporting on feedback or participating in service review activity.