Staff Development Weekly Update

ALN Staff Development Update #115 – 23 September 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

Thanks to everyone who has stepped up to present on the 2026-2027 programme so far – we really appreciate it! We’ll be adding to this list gradually over the year so please keep coming back to check for new content.

November 2026

Supporting Student Systematic Reviews
Hosted in-person at Leeds Trinity University
Date: 9 November 2026
Time: 10.00 – 11.30 (with optional campus tour afterwards)

Reading Lists: keeping them relevant and making the most of library collections and beyond…
Hosted online by LJMU
Date: 18 November 2026
Time: 12.00 – 12.45

Research funding for librarians: reflections on the Research Catalyst programme 2025-26
Hosted online by Sunderland
Date: 30 November 2026
Time: 10.00 – 11.30

December 2026

** New Series** Career Conversations…with Alex Wheeler (Manchester Met)
Hosted online by ALN
Date: 3 Dember 2026
Time: 10.00 – 10.45

Celebrating individual and institutional successes

We would love to create a space in our updates to help to celebrate the successes of individuals within our member libraries and those of the library services in general. Does your institution have something to share? Any project wins or individual achievements that you would like to share with your colleagues in other ALN institutions, both big or small? Please get in touch with us so we can start to share and celebrate together – academiclibrariesnorth@sconul.ac.uk. We can’t wait to hear from you!

Frontline Forum 2026/27

The Frontline Forum organising team has been busy planning dates for the 2026/27 academic year!

Please add the following to your calendars (more information, including the topics, to follow nearer the time):

• Monday 16 November 2026 – 10.00 – 11.30 – Topic: engaging students at the start of term
• Tuesday 19 January 2027 – 2.00 – 3.30
• Wednesday 17 March 2027 – 10.00 – 11.30
• Thursday 3 June 2027 – 2.00 – 3.30

Take a look on our Frontline Forum webpage for more information and our past Frontline Forums here.

——————–
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.

ALN Conference 2026

We were delighted to award 13 sponsored places for this years conference. Their reflections and thoughts have been brought together and supplement the recordings below. We love all of the submissions from cartoons, drawings, photos and text.

As a reminder, the theme of our conference was ‘Reimagining Openness in Academic Libraries’ and looked at what “open” really means in academic libraries today. We had such a broad range of speakers, workshops and keynotes that helped make both days of interest to colleagues working across all library services. Resources from both days are available on the ALN website. We have now completed the checking and editing of recordings to ensure they are all accessible and they are now available on our Conference 2026 playlist on YouTube.

Save the Date!
The in-person day for our 2027 conference will be taking place on Tuesday 13 July 2027 at the Creative Centre at York St John University. We’ll confirm the online date as soon as we can.

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

ALN Skill Up Series

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 2026/27 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?

ALN Annual Review 2025

Free External Self Directed Opportunities

There are many different places where you will find a range of materials which are freely available.

After consulting with members of our Staff Development Group we have begun to pull these together in one document which helps to highlight resources that other information professionals have found useful or have recommended to others to use.

If you’d like to give us feedback on any resources you’ve used, want to suggest your own or report any broken links, we’d appreciate your thoughts via this webform.

EDI Innovation Fund Projects

In May 2025, we funded 4 projects, two of which have shared their findings – see below – and one project team contributed to the in-person day of the ALN Conference 2026:

• Calm Spaces. Aim: To evaluate and develop calm spaces at the University of Huddersfield and Sheffield Hallam University. It is hoped that the results of the project will have a positive impact on student wellbeing. (Huddersfield and Sheffield Hallam)
  Outputs: Calm Spaces Project Case Studies
• Accessible Library Induction Guides. Aim: To investigate offering basic library services guides in different formats: print, large print, audio, video, and online to make library guidance more accessible to students. The project teams will work with students in the creation of the guides and students will review the content of library induction sessions and create a list of “library essential facts”. (Chester)
  Outputs: Best practice in accessible library guides and Dos and don’ts accessibility checklist and Print accessibility checklist
• Inclusive Academic Reading Project. Aim: To investigate the habits, preferences, and motives of undergraduate and postgraduate students regarding university reading lists and academic reading preferences; and to develop an evidence base to enhance retention, progression, and completion rates, with a particular focus on students from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds. (Manchester Met and Sheffield Hallam) You can see the presentation from Manchester Met and Sheffield Hallam colleagues at the ALN 2026 conference at this link (see 2b)

• Reducing barriers and supporting people seeking sanctuary in realising their academic potential. Aim: To evaluate, expand and evolve the University of Hull’s Sanctuary Associate Membership scheme, utilising UX research methods, for example, customer journey mapping, card sorting, creating user personas and user benchmarking to evaluate the use of our current provision and identify user challenges. (Hull) 

Outputs for the remaining project will be shared as soon as they are available.

ALN Group Co-Chair Vacancies

We’re looking for co-Chairs for a few of our groups. It’s a great professional development opportunity – please get in touch if you are interested or would like to know a bit more about what it entails.

You can see more information here on what the groups do, along with videos of some of our current chairs talking about their experiences chairing a group, as well as our role overview, providing more details on the roles.

These are the groups with current vacancies:

• Academic Skills CoP – 2 vacancies
• ILLs Group – 2 vacancies
• Technology – 1 vacancy

Call for SCONUL Contributions/Involvement

SCONUL new shared service: the Organisational Development Knowledge Base (ODKB)
SCONUL’s new shared service, the Organisational Development Knowledge Base (ODKB) is now live, and we are inviting members to add their data. The ODKB is a searchable database of job descriptions and organisational charts, allowing you to share and reuse information and resources quickly and easily. It will allow you to compare JDs for similar roles, including salary information, and to distinguish newly created or reviewed JDs. It will also allow you to review organisational structures for any participating member institution. We would like to thank to all of those who have contributed so far including by providing data for the pilot. Particular thanks go to Davina Omar, Director of Library Services at the University of West London who has led the development of this project.

SCONUL AI coffee mornings
SCONUL’s regular AI coffee morning will pause for the summer break and will be back on Friday 25 September at 10am where we’ll hear from Hannes Lowagie, Metadata Librarian at the Royal Library of Belgium. Hannes Lowagie will talk about metadata creation with AI. The coffee mornings brings together those with an interest in AI developments within libraries on the last Friday of every month. SCONUL members can register for future AI coffee mornings, as well as access recordings and resources here (once registered).

SCONUL Business Intelligence CIG meeting
Date: Wednesday 14 October 2026 (10.00 – 11.30)
SCONUL’s Business Intelligence Community of Interest Group is currently planning for their next meeting on 14 October. The topic for the meeting is the SCONUL benchmarking statistics and the CIG officers are looking for presenters for some lightning talks. Are you responsible for collating your institution’s SCONUL stats? How do you go about collecting them? What issues and challenges do you face? How do you make use of SCONUL statistics at your institution? If you have any questions, please contact the CIG officers: Michael Whitton m.whitton@soton.ac.uk, Philip Vaughan ab1409@coventry.ac.uk, Emma Hollinshead e.l.hollinshead@aston.ac.uk.

External Events and Opportunities

UK Print Book Collection (UK PBC) membership and one year celebration
Date: Wednesday 14 October 2026
The UK Print Book Collection (UK PBC) is approaching 50 members in its first year and is hosting a webinar to celebrate. There will be case studies from member libraries, and an opportunity to find out more about the UK PBC. If you are not yet a member, please do consider joining this coordinated national effort to preserve long-term access to print books. The success of the UK PBC depends on as many libraries as possible participating in this shared approach to preserving monographs through a distributed collection model, based on a minimum of seven libraries with a retained copy. Membership is free, and there are three membership levels to suit different organisations and levels of involvement. If you would like to become a member of the UK PBC, please email ukpbc@bl.uk to request a copy of the Memorandum of Understanding. For further information, please visit the UK PBC website.

NLISN Event on Intersectionality
Date: Wednesday 21 October 2026
NLISN is putting on an in-person, one-day event ‘Intersections: Identity, Neurodivergence, and Library & Information Work’ which will take place at City St George’s University, Clerkenwell campus, London. Travel advice and specific room information for the event will be shared in due course. The goal is to bring together neurodivergent LIS workers and allies to talk about how neurodivergence sits alongside the other parts of who we are, and how all those different overlaps shape our working lives, our careers, and our wellbeing. We’re particularly interested in how neurodivergence interacts with things like race and ethnicity; gender and gender identity; sexuality; age and career stage; disability and long-term health conditions; menopause and hormonal change; nationality, migration and culture; and professional role or status (leadership, casual and precarious work, student workers, and so on). Bookings are now open for the event with tickets priced at a cost of £25. NLISN has tried to keep costs to a minimum but if you need a free place and a bursary towards travel expenses they will aim to make some available, please get in touch to ask for details. Anyone accepted to speak on the day will be offered a free ticket.

Senior Library Manager, Business Systems
Location: Open University
Salary: £47,389 to £56,535
Contract type: Fixed Term, Full Time
Closing Date: Thursday 24 September 2026

About the Role
The role of Senior Library Manager, Business Systems and will be expected to line manage part of the library systems team and undertake the tasks outlined here in collaboration with the other SLM Business Systems.

You would be accountable for the delivery of the technical infrastructure and systems framework that underpin the efficient delivery of Library Services. You will manage multiple technology systems, products and services through the complete lifecycle, from inception to mainstream adoption and ongoing use and decommissioning.

This work involves establishing and fostering effective partnerships that will contribute to service delivery and strategies, improvements to services for users, value for money and the exploitation of new technologies.

You will contribute to sharing good practices to support library, information and knowledge services and provides expertise and leadership on library systems issues. You will have a high level of understanding of information technologies, digital library service delivery, website and related infrastructure in the context of library systems, archival and repository systems.

Key Responsibilities

Strategic and service leadership

• Work with stakeholders and partners to translate business requirements into system designs, functional specifications and plans.
• Provide advice and guidance to colleagues on the implementation and development of new systems.
• As a member of the Extended Leadership Team contribute to strategy development, ensure a responsive and customer-oriented approach to service development and delivery, with a focus on continuous improvement and take part in the Library Duty Manager rota.
• Maintain awareness of relevant university, national and international developments, initiatives and technologies applicable to Library Services, in order to ensure that systems provide high-quality up-to-date services.
• Lead on the procurement of new systems to meet Library Services technical requirements; ensuring that library systems comply with all University IT policies.
• Lead the development of systems strategy and related policy formation.

Systems, digital delivery and operational management

• Ensure the effective operation of library technology systems, maintaining compliance with legal and information security requirements
• Develop and maintain robust and sustainable support processes and procedures to ensure the availability of core Library Services technology systems, ensuring daytime and out of hours support is provided by the Business Systems team.
• Co-ordinate with the Knowledge and Information Management Systems team to develop and maintain sustainable support processes, ensuring the availability and resilience of core systems with appropriate daytime and out-of-hours coverage.

Collaboration and supplier management

• Ensure effective collaboration with Digital Services, Information Security, Procurement, Data Protection and other relevant teams to ensure that Library Services systems comply with University policies and procedures.
• Lead engagement with external providers of library systems to ensure appropriate supplier management is in place and systems deliver contracted levels of service and performance.

Continuous improvement and governance

• Support ongoing change by reviewing systems, processes, and management practices to identify improvements and strengthen service effectiveness.
• Establish performance measures, evaluation methods, and continuous improvement processes to ensure service quality, compliance, security and effective systems management.

Leadership and reporting

• Manage and motivate direct reports, including recruitment, annual appraisal, personal development planning and objective setting through the CDSA process
• Produce reports as required, including performance, systems metrics, budget management, and relevant updates.

Sector engagement

• Participate in external networks, and otherwise to keep abreast of current and likely future developments, using this intelligence to ensure that the Open University Library is sector leading.

Open Research Adviser
Location: Manchester Metropolitan University
Grade/Salary: Grade 5/£28,031 to £30,378
Contract Type: Permanent, Full Time
Closing Date: Sunday 27 September 2026

Manchester Metropolitan University Library & Cultural Services is seeking a collaborative and proactive Open Research Adviser to join our Open Research team. This is a fantastic opportunity for a highly motivated individual who thrives in a fast-paced environment and enjoys connecting with researchers and professionals in scholarly communication.

About the role:

As the Open Research Adviser, you will play a crucial role in making the University’s research outputs open access. Your responsibilities will include:

• Supporting the delivery and assessment of open research training.
• Conducting data analysis and reporting to measure the impact of our efforts.
• Providing administrative support to the Open Research Manager.
• Collaborating with researchers, doctoral students, and colleagues across the university.

This position offers excellent opportunities for professional development and networking. You will use your expertise to:

• Develop our understanding of current issues across the open research community.
• Maintain up-to-date information on the institutional research repository.
• Contribute to a responsive research enquiry service.

You will join a passionate and empowered team (we are small but mighty!), and an innovative and evolving library service. It is an exciting time for research; with excellent REF results and an effective and impactful Research Strategy, we are driving institutional change in open research and research culture.

Please note: Interviews are provisonally scheduled for Thursday 29 October 2026.

Get in touch: For any enquires please contact  Claire Wilson, c.e.wilson@mmu.ac.uk.

Legal Deposit Serials/Newspaper Processing Team Manager
Location: British Library (Boston Spa)
Salary: £28,152 per annum
Contract Type: Permanent, Full Time
Closing Date: Sunday 4 October 2026

An exciting opportunity has arisen within Content Acquisition Processing. We are seeking to recruit a team manager with proven people management skills. You will be managing a team of twelve staff responsible for the ordering, claiming and receipting of print Serials/Newspaper content acquired under the Legal Deposit legislation. The successful candidate will work with an experienced and supportive management team to deliver a high level of service that supports the British Library’s content strategy.

The successful candidate must be able to demonstrate:

– Strong people management skills, including the ability to motivate and develop staff.

– Good communication skills, able to communicate effectively with colleagues at all levels.

– Ability to manage resources and workloads, and good time management to meet deadlines.

– Ability to respond proactively and constructively to departmental change management processes.

– Some evidence of analytical skills.

– Computer literate, with a good working knowledge of Microsoft Outlook, Word, and Excel, with proven ability of working with databases to retrieve or create data.

Due to the nature of the role, the day-to-day management of staff and related workflows, the successful candidate would be required to work predominantly on site.

Assistant Archivist 
Location: LJMU
Contract Type: Full Time, Fixed Term
Salary: £32,080 – £37,694 per annum
Closing Date: Sunday 4 October 2026
Interview Date: Wednesday 4 November 2026

We currently have a vacancy for an Assistant Archivist at LJMU Special Collections & Archives, based on campus for 12 months during a period of closure and a major refurbishment of the library building including the archive stores and reading room.

Liverpool John Moores University is seeking to appoint an Assistant Archivist to join the Special Collections and Archives team on a 12-month fixed-term contract.

Working as part of a small team, the postholder will support the management, preservation and accessibility of the University’s archive and special collections. As the University embarks on a programme of refurbishment works, our archive service is currently closed to users. Therefore, the role will focus on collection preservation, including mould remediation work, cataloguing and digitisation and helping to ensure collections are appropriately documented, cared for and prepared for future access and use. Over the course of this year we will be transitioning to a new content management system, and the role holder will participate in this work.

The successful candidate will have knowledge of archival principles and practices, excellent organisational skills and a methodical approach to work. The ability to work independently and as part of a team, together with strong attention to detail, will be essential. Previous experience of working with collection preservation and system upgrades is not essential but will be considered favourably,

This role offers an opportunity to gain practical experience across a broad range of archival activities within a university archive service and to contribute to the long-term stewardship of collections of local, national and international significance.

Informal enquiries may be made to Emily Parsons, LJMU Archivist & Special Collections Librarian at E.Parsons@ljmu.ac.uk.

Visitor Information Assistant
Location: Durham University
Grade/Salary: Grade 3/£17,875-£18,265 (pro rata full-time salary of £25,025 – £25,571)
Contract Type: Open-Ended/Permanent, Part Time (25 hrs/week)
Closing Date: Tuesday 6 October 2026

This is a great opportunity to work in Durham University’s amazing museums, heritage buildings and libraries. The Customer Services Team is part of University Library and Collections (ULC). We provide front-line (face to face and virtual) customer, visitor and enquiry services across our department. This includes visitor services at our museums and visitor attractions: Palace Green Library, Oriental Museum and Durham Castle, as well as user services in our Libraries and study spaces, 7 days a week, including 24/7 term-time opening.

This post will work across Visitor and Library Services in our various museums, heritage buildings and libraries. The role actively contributes to the frontline customer service provision, ensuring that all customers have a high-quality experience, through working on information points, answering queries, proactively providing information, and assisting customers. Specific tasks across our sites include visitor guiding, exhibition preparation, working on our Help and Information desk answering queries and assisting customers, user engagement, supporting special events, circulation tasks including book returns and some re-shelving, maintenance of the collections, undertaking opening and closing routines and maintaining study spaces and galleries

The Customer Services team work Monday to Sunday, including bank holidays, as part of a standard rota. The shift pattern for this role will include weekend working every week.

Content Acquisition Digital Processing Manager
Location: British Library (Boston Spa)
Salary: £28,152 per annum
Contract Type: Permanent, Full Time
Closing Date: Sunday 11 October 2026

An exciting opportunity has arisen within Content Acquisition. We are seeking to recruit a team manager with proven people management skills. You will be managing a team of seven people responsible for the acquisition and processing of digital content acquired under the Legal Deposit regulations. The successful candidate will work with an experienced and supportive management team to deliver a high level of service that supports the British Library’s content strategy.

The successful candidate must be able to demonstrate:

– Strong people management skills, including the ability to motivate and develop staff.

– Good communication skills, able to communicate effectively with colleagues at all levels.

– Ability to manage resources and workloads, and good time management to meet deadlines.

– Ability to respond proactively and constructively to departmental change management processes.

– Some evidence of analytical skills.

– Computer literate, with a good working knowledge of Microsoft Outlook, Word, and Excel, with proven ability of working with databases to retrieve or create data.

– Some basic understanding of metadata standards and formats i.e. SGML, HTML, MARC.

Due to the nature of the role, the day-to-day management of staff and related workflows, the successful candidate would be required to work a minimum of three days per week on site.

Assistant Archivist

Location: Liverpool John Moores University
Salary: £32,080 – £37,694 per annum
Contract Type: 12 month contract, Full Time
Closing Date: Sunday 4th October 2026

Working as part of a small team, you will support the management, preservation and accessibility of the University’s archive and special collections. As the University embarks on a programme of refurbishment works, our archive service is currently closed to users.  Therefore, the role will focus on collection preservation, including mould remediation work, cataloguing and digitisation and helping to ensure collections are appropriately documented, cared for and prepared for future access and use.  Over the course of this year, we will be transitioning to a new content management system, and you will participate in this work.

You will have knowledge of archival principles and practices, excellent organisational skills and a methodical approach to work. The ability to work independently and as part of a team, together with strong attention to detail, will be essential.  Previous experience of working with collection preservation and system upgrades is not essential but will be considered favourably,

This role offers an opportunity to gain practical experience across a broad range of archival activities within a university archive service and to contribute to the long-term stewardship of collections of local, national and international significance.

Informal enquiries may be made to Emily Parsons, LJMU Archivist & Special Collections Librarian at E.Parsons@ljmu.ac.uk