Staff Development Weekly Update

ALN Staff Development Update #92 – 4 March 2026

This weekly update is intended to keep you up to date on ALN’s staff development programme; to highlight interesting initiatives being undertaken by ALN or its members; and to promote job opportunities in our member libraries. If you have any queries or any content you’d like to include, please get in touch at: academiclibrariesnorth@sconul.ac.uk

ALN Events

March 2026

** New ** EDInspiration – Be inspired by ALN EDI Innovation Fund Projects
Hosted by: EDI Action Group
Date: Thursday 5 March 2026
Time: 2.00 – 3.30pm
Platform: Online via Teams

Introduction to Critical Appraisal for Librarians
Hosted by: Leeds Trinity University 
Date: Tuesday 10 March 2026
Time: 10.00 – 12.30pm (followed by optional LTU tour and lunch)
Location: Leeds Trinity University

** New ** ALN EDI Ideas Bazaar
Hosted by: EDI Action Group
Date: Tuesday 17 March 2026
Time: 11.00 – 12.00pm
Platform: Online via Teams

Exploring personal and team resilience 
Hosted by: Lancaster & LJMU 
Date: Thursday 19 March 2026
Time: 10.00 – 12.30pm
Platform: Online via Teams
We have set up a waiting list for this now as it has proved popular! 

May 2026

** Date for your Diary ** Marking Mental Health Awareness Week
Hosted by: ALN MH&W Team
Date: Tuesday 12 May 2026
Time: Starting at 1pm
Platform: Online via Teams
More information to follow soon.

Systematic Review Event (sponsored by Covidence)
Hosted by: Newcastle University
Date: Thursday 14 May 2026
Time: 9.30am – 4.30pm
Location: Newcastle University

June 2026

** Date for your Diary ** SHU Teachmeet – Reaching every learner: Engagement strategies for teaching library and academic skills
Hosted by: Sheffield Hallam University
Date: Thursday 4 June 2026
Time: TBC
Location: Sheffield Hallam University
More information to follow soon.

Call for Contributions

** New ** ALN Data Showcase
Hosted by: Service Engagement & Impact Group
Date: June TBC
Time: 10.00 – 3.00pm
Platform: Online via Teams

This event will be an opportunity to showcase what people are doing with data collection, data handling, data analysis and dashboards, sharing best practice, outlining how they handle a data problem, how they engage with data and the impact of it.

• Format: Lightning talks and case studies from member institutions.
• Aim: To share practical solutions and highlight the small actions that have had a big impact!

If you feel you have something to contribute to the event, please get in touch: academiclibrariesnorth@sconul.ac.uk. We’ll confirm the date of the event as soon as possible.

** New ** Setting up EDI Working Groups
Hosted by: ALN EDI Action Group
Date: Thursday 25 June 2026
Time: TBC
Platform: Online via Teams

We are hoping that this event will provide you with the opportunity to hear the experiences of colleagues in other ALN institutions who have set up EDI Working Groups at their home libraries. They will share the good, the bad and the ugly of creating and maintaining these groups.

We’re likely to have 3 or 4 short presentations and an opportunity for Q&A/group discussions.

Please contact us at academiclibrariesnorth@sconul.ac.uk if you could contribute your experiences to the event – we’d love to hear from you!

ALN Skill Up Series

New series – Skill Up with ALN!
Have you seen that we introduced a new series last academic year called Skill Up with ALN? These hour long sessions offer an opportunity to learn about different roles and areas of library life and aim to demystify areas of the library service. We have already run two sessions this year and have some more topic ideas for the 2024/25 academic year but if you have any ideas, please do share them with us.

ALN SD Offer Infographic

Do you think you know all that ALN offers to support your staff development? Why not check out our Staff Development Infographic to see the full list of activities. Let us know how you got on. Did you get all of them?

Frontline Forum 2025/26

Our next forum of 2025/26 is taking place on Wednesday 25 March 2026, 10.00 – 11.30am with a theme of Encouraging responsible use of Spaces. The forum will have a specific focus on proactive activities and campaigns to support busier periods around exams and assessments.

Get involved! We know different libraries have different challenges during exams. We’d love to hear from you if your library has a successful idea or initiative that you would be happy to share with frontline colleagues in the form of a short 5 minute presentation or talk.

Please get in touch at academiclibrariesnorth@sconul.ac.uk if you’d like to know more or are interested in presenting.

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About the Forums

The Frontline Forum is an online discussion and development space for teams working directly with students and users. The forums are an opportunity to share best practice, engage with other ALN activities and learn about different service models and delivery types offered by different universities. The forum is aimed at staff who work on frontline desks and provide the first line of support to students and other library users.

The provisional date for the rest of the year are as follows and we’ll be confirming the topic in the weeks leading up to it:

• Tuesday 2 June 2026, 2.00 – 3.30

ALN Conference 2026

Our Call for Papers is now open! The deadline for submissions is Friday 13 March 2026. Find out more information on the submission process and how we can help support you through it on the conference webpage.

The theme of our conference is ‘Reimagining Openness in Academic Libraries’ and will be looking at what “open” really means in academic libraries today.

Dates for your diary:

Online Day – Wednesday 24 June 2026 – we’re delighted to announce that Professor Stephen Pinfield, Professor of Information Services Management at the University of Sheffield, will be our keynote speaker at our online day.

In-person Day – Monday 6 July 2026 (Dalton Building, Manchester Metropolitan University) – we’re also delighted to announce that Caroline Ball, Community Engagement Lead for the Open Book Collective (OBC), will be our keynote speaker at our in-person day.

If you have any queries about the conference, please contact ALNConferenceTeam@gmail.com.

ALN EDI Innovation Fund 2026

We will be launching our EDI Innovation Fund for 2026 soon so, in the meantime, get your thinking caps on for a potential project for which you could apply for funding.

The fund aims to provide small grants to ALN institutions (up to a max of £1000) to support a project, event or activity which will improve, enhance or develop approaches to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI).

Bids should ideally be submitted in collaboration with another ALN member or ALN group, to help support the collaborative ethos of ALN. Lone bids are also welcome if you can provide evidence of their relevance to the ALN EDI mission is provided.

Timeline 2026 

We will be opening the application process soon. These are the provisional dates for 2026:

• EDInspiration Event (sharing and celebrating 2025 projects): Thursday 5 March 2026, 2.00 – 3.30pm
• Ideas Bazaar (bring your ideas and find a collaboration partner): Tuesday 17 March 2026, 11.00 – 12.00
• Deadline for bids: Thursday 2 April 2026
• Successful bids informed by: Friday 24 April 2026
• Projects start: May 2026
• Projects duration: 9-12 months

Successful projects will be expected to share information about their projects at the end of the project period in the form of, for example, a report, a conference presentation or an online resource. We run an event at the end of the projects to celebrate the successes, share information on the type of projects that were funded and to give inspiration to those hoping for funding for their project.

Criteria for funding

The following criteria are used to assess the bids:

• Is it a collaborative project including 2 or more ALN members? Or does it outline how the work of the project will enable collaboration?
• Does it outline what the expected impact of the project will be?
• Does it demonstrate how the outputs and learning of the project will be shared and disseminated across the breadth of the ALN community, e.g. a conference presentation, an online resource etc?
• Are the costs of the project up to £1000 and does it outline how the money will be spent?

Mental Health & Wellbeing Resource

Are you planning to do something for University Mental Health Day on Thursday 12 March? Check out the resources on the ALN Mental Health & Wellbeing Advocacy Resource to find some resources to give you some inspiration for the day.

The Mental Health & Wellbeing Advocacy Resource is packed full of useful information, case studies and links to resources. A project team drawn from across ALN has worked together to create the resource to support library work around mental health and wellbeing. The resource consists of explanatory text and links to resources relating to this emerging agenda and case studies contributed by ALN libraries, so that we can learn from each other. We’d love more people to make use of the resource – and, if you have been working in this area, we would love to add your case study to our collection.

To mark Blue Monday the team from the ALN Mental Health and Wellbeing Resource ran an event to discuss how libraries can best support student and staff wellbeing.

Two presentations kicked off the discussions – click on the links below:

• Rebecca Humphreys talked about her study of wellbeing collections.
• Rachel Huskisson reported on her survey of FE college provision.

External Opportunities

Date: Monday 2 to Friday 6 March 2026
The schedule and registration for Open Research Week 2026 has been announced. Open Research Week is a series of events that discusses new, developing and current practice in all things Open Research. It is organised by Edge Hill University, the University of Liverpool, Liverpool John Moores University, and the University of Essex. All events are free, and you can register for each one individually. All sessions (except the Friday Fika) will be recorded, so if you cannot attend, please sign up and these recordings will be sent out in due course. As a specific call to action, please feel free to share with your colleagues, contacts and comrades that are interested in Open Research. All are welcome.

The organising group would like to thank all speakers for sharing their time and expertise as part of Open Research Week 2026, in particular, colleagues from the University of Leeds/ALN who will be joining for a discussion on global knowledge in one of Thursday’s sessions and colleagues from the University of Manchester and their Open Research Days last summer that inspired an invite to Wednesday’s talk! You can see a list of the events here.

OBC Collective Development Fund Grant Programme: 2026 Call & Guidance
Deadline for submissions: Saturday 7 March 2026
Apply now! The Open Book Collective has opened their Collection Development Fund for new applications. The fund is open to applications that will:
• Create and support infrastructures and/or workflows for the distribution, cataloguing and/or preservation of OA scholarly books
• Build and sustain networks and advocacy for the support of OA scholarly books and infrastructure
• Build capacity for scholarly OA book publishing
More detail, including keys dates, application form and templates, is available on the OBC website. Details about how to book to attend the conference will be available in due course. If you have any queries, please email cilip.northeast@gmail.com.

Demystifying Data Journals: Experiences of data journal editors
Date: Tuesday 10 March 2026
Colleagues from Manchester, Lancaster and Sheffield University Libraries have been involved in organising this N8 supported event, in which you can learn how publishing in data journals can increase awareness of your research. Data journals are a format of publication that publish datasets or ‘data papers’ rather than conventional research articles. They offer a route to increase the visibility of research data outputs whilst also rewarding creators with a peer-reviewed publication, credit, and increased opportunity for citation (Walters, 2020). This event will feature presentations from researchers from a range of disciplines, in both STEM and the humanities, involved in editing data journals, who will share their experiences and advice with attendees. The event will introduce the concept of data journals and how they operate and explore best practices when submitting papers to these journals or developing data journal publications. There will be opportunities for questions and discussions throughout the event. This event is delivered by the N8 Centre of Excellence in Computationally Intensive Research (N8 CIR) and attendance is open to anyone with an interest in learning more about data journals.

AI Skills for Librarians: the journey from AI literacy to AI fluency webinar 
Date: Friday 13 March 2026, 1.30pm to 3.00pm
SCONUL’s AI working group is hosting a webinar looking at skills and competencies for library teams working on the adoption, integration, and development of AI tools. We will be exploring core competencies for the library teams and discussing how we can support our teams to move from being AI literate to AI fluent. We will be joined by Jason Coleman, Academic Services Librarian at Kansas State University and Keven Jeffrey, Librarian at Kansas State University, who co-chaired the ACRL AI Competencies for Library Workers Task Force which has produced an insightful and helpful guide into AI competencies: https://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/ai focused on library teams.

SCONUL webinar series on the HE Reference Models
HERMS Webinar 1: Everything you wanted to know about the HE Reference Models but were afraid to ask 
Date: Tuesday 24 March 2026, 14.00 – 15.30
The HE Reference models have been increasingly appearing on libraries’ radar as they are being used to support and inform change processes in HE institutions. Come along to this webinar to discover why the HE Reference Models matter; how they work; and how they are being used to meet the challenges of digital transformation and to support other change processes within your institution.
We will hear from: Russell Boyatt, Director of Strategy and Architecture at the London School of Economics and member of the UCISA Enterprise Architecture Group who will set out the ‘what, why and how’ of the HE Reference Models and highlight plans for the development of a new HERMS Service Model; Anna O’Neill, SCONUL co-chair and University Librarian at the University of Warwick about the collaborative work that SCONUL has been doing with UCISA colleagues to ensure that library representation in the HERMs fully reflects the scope of libraries contribution to the business capabilities of the institution. We will also hear from colleagues in the HERMS working group on how the HE Reference Models are being used in their own institutions.
More information to follow later on future sessions in this series. 

Sponsored Places for UKSG Annual Conference
Date: Monday 30 March – Wednesday 1 April 2026
UKSG is offering ten free places to attend the UKSG Annual Conference and Exhibition in Glasgow, United Kingdom . These awards cover the cost of attendance at the conference, including all meals, entertainment and accommodation.

Those who can apply include:

• Early career practitioners with up to five years’ experience in any sector of the scholarly information community. (We will also consider applications where an applicant’s career has changed significantly.)
• Individuals who identify as having a voice or perspective that is underrepresented within the sector. This underrepresentation may be experienced within a local context (at your organisation) or be more pervasive within the scholarly information community.
• Individuals from the scholarly information community who have not attended the UKSG conference before.

UKSG Annual Conference is a key meeting, benefits of attending include: learning about the newest developments in scholarly communications from librarians, publishers and intermediaries. discovering some of the latest products and services available to information professionals networking and sharing experiences with colleagues from the global scholarly communications sector and participating in social events, from the “Newcomers Reception” to the Conference Dinner.

Job Opportunities

Collections Assistant (NLHF Engagement) 
Location: Durham University
Grade/Salary: Grade 4/£12,421.50 – £12,866.50 which is pro rata the full time salary of £24,843 – £25,733
Contract: Fixed Term – Part Time
Closing Date: Thursday 5 March 2026

The Role and the Department

In January 1833 Bishop William van Mildert donated 160 volumes to found the University Library, located on Palace Green and in the same year Durham’s first university museum opened to the public. Today the University Library and Collections offers spaces, collections, expertise and services supporting education, research, the wider student experience and cultural and educational outreach. Collections and services operate across a wide estate of libraries, archives, museums, galleries and exhibition spaces, including the UNESCO World Heritage Site on Palace Green. Our nationally and internationally recognised collections span early books, archives and manuscripts, museum objects and art, print and electronic materials and include a repository of digitised materials, research outputs and research data. Our users encompass anyone engaging with our collections, services and facilities in person or remotely, this includes university staff, researchers from around the globe, students in higher education from Durham and other universities, school pupils and teachers, Durham’s local residents and tourists.

We are an ambitious and developing team with a focus on providing the best experience for our students, researchers and the wider community. We are valued partners working with students, professional services and academics across the University, and professionals and organisations regionally, nationally and internationally.

The University Library and Collections is made up of six sections: Collections; Customer Services; Education, Learning and Engagement; Research and Systems; Museums, Galleries and Exhibitions; and Finance and Administration. Staff work flexibly between the sections, enabled by cross-cutting groups.

The Museums, Galleries and Exhibitions team, under the leadership of the Head of Museums, Galleries and Exhibitions, is responsible for world-class museum, art, college and natural science collections supporting their care, curation, and discovery, as well as facilitating public and research access to those collections. Our spaces include the Oriental Museum, Palace Green Library (including the Museum of Archaeology) and Durham Castle Museum. We work with pre-school children, primary and secondary schools, undergraduates, postgraduates, researchers and the wider community both within our venues and through our loans and outreach programmes, as well as increasingly through digital engagement.

The Museum of Archaeology cares for over 40,000 objects spanning 10,000 years of Durham’s history. This post is part of Connecting Communities with Durham’s Archaeological Heritage, a major redevelopment project funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund and the Sir James Knott Trust. The two-year project will transform the Museum of Archaeology into an inclusive, sustainable space that improves access to Durham’s 10,000-year story. Through co-curation, digital interpretation and community engagement, the project aims to remove barriers to participation and create opportunities for schools, volunteers and local communities to connect with archaeology in meaningful ways

The Collections Assistant will work in partnership with the Curator of Archaeology and Natural Sciences, collaborating with the Museums, Galleries and Exhibitions team and the Learning and Engagement team to deliver project objectives. The role focuses on increasing access to Durham’s archaeological collections and creating meaningful opportunities for engagement. The postholder will support co-curation workshops with schools, volunteers and community groups, helping to shape displays and interpretation that reflect diverse voices. They will assist in developing and delivering an inclusive programme of activities, including object-handling sessions, family events and creative workshops, working closely with the Learning and Engagement team to ensure alignment with curriculum and community needs. This is an exciting opportunity to contribute to a landmark project and gain hands-on experience in museum practice.

Based at the Oriental Museum, this role involves regular travel within Durham City, including displays at Palace Green Library and collections stored off-site in the local area. Due to the hands-on nature of the role, there will be limited scope for hybrid working. In addition, because of the nature of the project and its public engagement activities, there may be the requirement for regular weekend and evening working, to ensure successful delivery as of the project. Further information about the role and responsibilities is provided at the end of this job description. The line manager for this post will be the Curator of Archaeology and Natural Sciences.

LIS Purchasing and Planning Manager
Location: University of Chester
Salary: £43,878 to £49,250
Contract Type: Permanent, Full Time
Closing Date: Sunday 8 March 2026

Learning and Information Services (LIS) provides a range of key services including library and information technology and plays an important role in the learning, teaching, research and administrative functions of the university. The department promotes a strong project and service management ethos and staff are required to keep up to date with the latest technologies in order to support high quality traditional and electronic services for our users.

Learning and Information Services is seeking to appoint a full-time LIS Purchasing and Planning Manager at its Chester Campus. Reporting to the LIS Deputy Director, the core purpose of this post is to provide operational leadership and management for the Purchasing and Planning team (incl. support for the LIS Projects, LIS Leadership and LIS Operational Managers). The postholder will collaborate closely with LIS Management and other stakeholders to ensure continual improvement and development of LIS Purchasing and Planning services informed by feedback, usage data and wider strategic priorities. The department are looking for candidates with relevant experience in project governance, procurement and contract management, as well as involvement in departmental strategic planning processes which includes the development and implementation of a strategic management performance tool (e.g. balanced scorecard) to improve internal department operations and facilitate improved outcomes.