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 Service Design & Delivery department, which consists of the Systems, Space & Discovery and Frontline Services teams. The Department provides welcoming library environments (both digital and physical), enabling users to get the most out of our spaces, services, and collections, as well as facilitating continual service improvement and development of new services across Libraries and Collections. The Systems, Space & Discovery Team, in which this role sits, supports and develops the systems and spaces across Libraries & Collections, encourages good practice in metadata management, and facilitates continual service improvement.  

About The Role

The Library Metadata & Discovery Coordinator plays a crucial role in making our collections easily discoverable by acting as a central point for support and training in cataloguing and metadata standards for staff across Libraries & Collections. You will be committed to ensuring the metadata is of high quality and sharing your expertise in metadata and discovery.

This role presents an exciting opportunity if you are interested in expanding and sharing your knowledge of cataloguing, furthering your skills in library systems, and are committed to enhancing user experience.

You will assist the Library Solutions Managers by overseeing the roll-out and enhancement of various systems and technologies, with a particular emphasis on improving our discovery tools.

As part of the Systems, Space & Discovery team, you will support colleagues and services across the team. You will work closely with the other coordinator in the team and coordinate the work of the Senior Library Assistants. 

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 

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, 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 related work in a library or archive, or commercial metadata supplier. Relevant educational experiences might include higher education in a related discipline, professional qualifications or other training
2. Excellent oral and written communication skills, including the ability to present information to a range of different audiences
3. Experience in positively and proactively resolving a range of problems
4. Experience of supervising staff
5. Ability to work independently in a fast-changing environment and to meet challenging deadlines
6. Ability to work effectively and proactively with own team, other teams and with our stakeholders to provide a high-quality service
7. Up-to-date knowledge of data protection and copyright legislation
8. High IT literacy and ability to learn new systems
9. Knowledge of relevant recognised cataloguing, metadata and classification standards including LCC, LCSH, RDA, MARC21
10. Experience of cataloguing a range of library resources.

Desirable criteria

1. Educated to degree level or professionally accredited library qualification.
2. Understanding of the current and future challenges facing academic libraries in research-intensive universities
3. Experience of co-ordinating projects and/or service improvements
4. Experience of library systems
5. Experience of training other staff in systems and cataloguing

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 next page after you click “Apply Now”. This document will provide information of what criteria will be assessed at each stage of the recruitment process.

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.

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​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.