King's College London

About King's:

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.

About the role:

The role is based in the Open Research team, which is an innovative and growing area of service provision. Senior Library Assistants within the Subscriptions & Access wing of the team support users with access to a wide range of print and electronic Library resources for their education, teaching, and research needs.

This is an exciting opportunity for candidates looking to work in the area of subscriptions, eresources and interlibrary loans, and who wish to utilise their skills and expertise in problem-solving complex queries, working with data, and explaining information to service users. This is an opportunity to grow your skills in liaising with suppliers, administering the lifecycle of subscription resources, including financial administration and usage data, and updating library metadata to support resource discovery.

The main focus of the role will require working on data checks, with spreadsheets and updating library metadata for resources, 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 4 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.

This is currently a hybrid role with both working from home and on campus.

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, Publisher, or University. 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. Ability to work to a high level of accuracy and attention to detail
4. Experience in positively and proactively dealing with routine problems
5. Experience of working in a customer-oriented environment and delivery high quality services
6. Ability to work effectively and proactively with own team, other teams and with our stakeholders
7. Ability to work under pressure and meet challenging deadlines
8. Commitment to equity, equality, diversity and inclusivity in your own learning and ways of working
9. Experience of working with a database (e.g., financial, admin) or a library/e-resources management system
10. Awareness of scholarly subscriptions matters - such as: e-resources and e-book acquisition models, big journal deals and transformative agreements, issues related to subscription access management, access over ownership.

Desirable criteria

1. Knowledge of e-resource discovery tools or library management system.

2. Knowledge of information resources provision and working with scholarly metadata

Full details of the role and the skills and experience required can be found in the attached job description.

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

Interview date: week commencing 26th May.

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.

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.