Staff Development Weekly Update

ALN Staff Development Update #100 – 12 May 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

May 2026

Systematic Review Event (sponsored by Covidence)
Hosted by: Newcastle University
Date: Thursday 14 May 2026
Time: 9.30am – 4.30pm
Location: Newcastle University
Please note: there is no longer a cap on the number of people who can attend from one institution.

June 2026

SHU Teachmeet – Reaching every learner: Engagement strategies for teaching library and academic skills
Hosted by: Sheffield Hallam University
Date: Thursday 4 June 2026
Time: 9.30am – 4.00pm
Location: Sheffield Hallam University
This event is now fully booked, but please join our Waiting List just in case someone drops out

ALN Data Showcase 
Hosted by: ALN Service Engagement & Impact Group
Date: Wednesday 17 June 2026
Time: 10.00 – 3.00pm
Platform: Online via Teams

**New!** ALN Conservation Surgery Now open for bookings!
Hosted by: ALN Special Collections & Archives Group
Date: Tuesday 23 June 2026
Time: 2.00 – 4.00pm
Platform: Online via Teams

July 2026

**New!** Exploring AI in Academic Libraries: Voices, Views, and Visions
Date: Thursday 2 July 2026
Time: 10.00-12.30
Platform: Online via Teams

**New!** 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.

Frontline Forum 2025/26

The provisional date for the next forum is Tuesday 2 June 2026, 2.00 – 3.30 with a theme of supporting neurodivergent students. More information, including how to book your place, from the Frontline Forum webpage!

As with previous forums, we will have presentations and opportunities to come together for discussions with peers in other institutions across ALN. Looking forward to seeing you on 2 June!

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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.

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

ALN Conference 2026

Booking for #ALN26 open! Early bird closes soon!

Grab yourself a place at the online day or the in-person day – or both! We have an early bird offer as well as a bulk booking option (further details on the website).

Thanks to everyone who submitted a proposal to present at the conference. The draft programme for the two days is now available – please take a look to find out what would be of interest to you!

As a reminder, the theme of our conference is ‘Reimagining Openness in Academic Libraries’ and will be looking at what “open” really means in academic libraries today. We are confident that the theme will appeal to a broad spectrum of library staff and we would love to receive submissions on scholarly communications, digital preservation, teaching and learning, metadata, collection development, or community engagement – and any other area of the library service to see how you’re grappling with openness in practice.

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 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?

ALN EDI Innovation Fund 2026

The ALN EDI Innovation Fund provides 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).

Timeline 2026 

The application process for this year’s ALN EDI Innovation Fund is now closed! Thank you to everyone who submitted a bid. We have now reviewed them and have now got back to everyone who applied (if you haven’t heard from us, please get in touch).

These are the key dates for 2026:

• 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?
• You can apply for up to £1000 for your project (but you can also apply for less if you don’t feel you’ll need the full £1000). Please ensure you know how the money will be spent and your costs are fully explained in your submission.

Please note: we are not able to fund physical materials (eg for rooms etc) as this falls outside of the remit of the funding. As an example, funding can enable research (amongst students and other stakeholders) to find out what furniture works for a specific space, for example by holding focus groups and paying students for their time, but not for the purchase of the furniture itself.

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 Librarians – 1 vacancy
• Leaders’ Network – 2 vacancies
• Metadata and Linked Data Group – 1 vacancy
• Technology – 1 vacancy

External Opportunities

SCONUL webinar on AI prompt libraries 
Date: Friday 15 May 2026
Would your library benefit from an AI prompt library to support users? Or are you already at the planning stage and would like to benefit from the expertise of those who have already done the groundwork? SCONUL’s AI working group is hosting a webinar, exploring two examples of prompt libraries created by Virgina Tech in the US and the University of Kent in the UK. The webinar will explore the process of development and management of their prompt libraries and discuss the lessons for the SCONUL community and will be joined by the following speakers:

• Ginny Pannabecker, Assistant Dean and Director, Research Collaboration and Engagement (RCE) at Virginia Tech, University Libraries and liaison to life sciences programs, who will give a short introduction on the Institutional context at Virginia Tech.
• Yinlin Chen, Associate Director, Centre for Digital Research & Scholarship, University Libraries at Virginia Tech, who will explain why the prompt library was set up, how it is managed, used, and how it sits within wider approach to teaching prompt engineering skills.
• Oliver Perrott-Webb, AI and Education Specialist at University of Kent, who will discuss their approach to the development of their prompt library.

SCONUL webinar series on the HE Reference Models
HERMS Webinar 2: HE Reference Models as a tool for institutional transformation
Date: Thursday 21 May 2026, 14.00 – 15.30
The HE Reference Models are being used as a tool for those leading institutional restructuring and transformation programmes, often alongside, or integrated with other frameworks. This webinar will include a deeper dive into how the HE Reference Models are being used to inform institutional change processes. It will also introduce the new HE Service Reference Model which is being developed to help support this type of work. It will hear from Mary Millard, Executive Director of Faculty Operations at University of Bristol and sponsor of Bristol’s Professional Services Transformation Programme which has led the development of the institution’s service catalogue based on the HERMs; Iain McCracken, Director of Service Delivery at the London School of Economics. Iain is leading the development of the new HE Service Reference Model and he will set out the background to its development; share the alpha version of the Service Model and discuss how the SCONUL community can engage with this work.
More information to follow later on future sessions in this series.

Digital Research Technical Professional (dRTP) Workshop 
Location: Manchester University
Date: Thursday 4 June 2026
A workshop to continue connecting digital research technical professionals (dRTP) at the University and beyond, and get into detail about the next steps of data stewardship across all faculties, and how to further recognise and support a variety of digital RTP colleagues as research producers. The audience for the workshop is dRTPs, academics who work with dRTPs and have data stewardship requirements currently under-met, library and information professionals. It’s open to dRTPs at the University of Manchester, at other universities in Greater Manchester, north of England and across the N8 universities. You do not have to have a dRTP job title, but your role should mainly be one or more of the following tasks: software engineering; data management/stewardship; computational infrastructure; bioinformatics; data science/analytics; data archivist; or data librarian.

External Calls for Contributions

Job Opportunities

Content Development Coordinator
Location: British Library (Boston Spa)
Salary: £28,152 per annum
Contract: Full Time, Permanent
Closing Date: Wednesday 13 May 2026

About the role

A permanent post in Content Development and Implementation (CDI) has arisen and we are seeking a proactive Content Management Co-Ordinator.

Are you proactive with good communication, organisational and problem-solving skills and able to work well in a team and respond constructively to feedback? If so, this could be the opportunity for you.

This is an exciting opportunity to help CDI deliver excellent content development support. Working as part of a small team you will manage processes for the cost-effective selection and review of monographs, serials and databases including the transition from print to e and reviewing new supply models. You will be used to handling data and undertaking analysis or confident that you have an aptitude to learn these skills. The wide-ranging activities undertaken in the area provide fantastic opportunities for development.

For more information, please refer to the Job Profile.

About us

We are the national library of the UK and we are here for everyone. Our shelves hold over 170 million items – a living collection that gets bigger every day. Although our roots extend back centuries, we aim to collect everything published in the UK today, tomorrow and far into the future. Our trusted experts care for this collection and open it up for everyone to spark new discoveries, ideas and to help people do incredible things.

Open Research Librarian
Location: University of Manchester
Contract Type: Full time, Fixed Term
Salary: £37,694 – £46,049 per annum depending on experience
Closing Date: Thursday 14 May 2026

Are you an experienced Open Research professional ready to take on a leadership role in a dynamic, fast-moving service? We’re seeking an Open Research Librarian to provide interim coordination for the University’s Open Access service, ensuring high-quality support for researchers and helping shape service developments during a key period of transition.

About the Role

As Interim Open Research Librarian, you will play a central role in the coordination, management and delivery of the University’s Open Access service. Working within the Office for Open Research, you will provide day-to-day leadership for service operations and team members, while also contributing to strategic planning, service improvement and the Library’s wider research support goals.

You will:

Provide interim coordination and operational oversight of the Open Access service, ensuring consistent, high-quality delivery of processing, enquiry handling, and compliance-related workflows.
Support the Open Research Manager and Office for Open Research leadership in planning and implementing service improvements aligned with the Library’s strategic goals.
Line manage Open Research Specialists, ensuring effective performance management, development, and staff empowerment.
Oversee service performance, using data, benchmarks and KPIs to monitor quality, identify issues, and drive improvements.
Build strong relationships across the Library and wider University, ensuring effective service resourcing and stakeholder engagement.
Represent the Library at internal and external meetings, contributing to sector discussions and maintaining a strong professional profile.
Support researcher-facing work, including advice on Open Access routes, compliance requirements, and scholarly communication processes.
This is a role for someone who can balance operational management, strategic insight, and confident communication, with a commitment to enabling open, transparent and responsible research.

Collection Metadata Analyst
Location: British Library (Boston Spa)
Salary: £32,619 per annum
Contract: Full Time, Permanent
Closing Date: Sunday 17 May 2026

About the role

The British Library’s Metadata Services team manages a range of processes involving incoming and outgoing content and metadata. The Library’s collection is its core asset, but our bibliographic resources must have good descriptive records in order to be discovered by customers. Our metadata is therefore an asset in itself.

Metadata Services work with a wide range of metadata providers and consumers to assist with cataloguing activities in our own institution and in others around the world. We need a Metadata Analyst to work on the ingest of material such as e-books, with an emphasis on the records that describe each item. The British Library has over 22 million records, and is constantly adding to its collection. To keep pace with our high rate of ingest, Metadata Services develop automated processes to import and analyse records from external providers, often matching against our existing metadata and upgrading it. We also export and tailor the Library’s records, delivering products like the British National Bibliography.

An applicant for a British Library role would clearly benefit from having a library or publishing background. For this role, a familiarity with standards such as ONIX (Online Information Exchange) or MARC21 would be valuable. However, we would welcome a candidate with relevant, transferable skills: any applicant with a firm knowledge of XML and XSLT may be well-suited to this role. Experience of scripting, Excel formulas and regular expressions would be an asset. Above all, applicants must be attentive to detail, and be able to work with precision and accuracy.

About us

We are the national library of the UK and we are here for everyone. Our shelves hold over 170 million items – a living collection that gets bigger every day. Although our roots extend back centuries, we aim to collect everything published in the UK today, tomorrow and far into the future. Our trusted experts care for this collection and open it up for everyone to spark new discoveries, ideas and to help people do incredible things.

Metadata Specialist
Location: British Library (Boston Spa)
Salary: £28,152 per annum
Contract: Full Time, Permanent
Closing Date: Sunday 17 May 2026

About the role

We are seeking three Metadata Specialists to join the British Library’s Metadata department. This is a key professional role focused on the creation, management and enhancement of high‑quality bibliographic metadata that enables discovery of the British Library’s collections for research, innovation and public engagement.

Working collaboratively with colleagues, stakeholders and national and international partners, you will apply professional judgement and expertise to describe, analyse and index collection items in accordance with recognised standards and best practice.

This is an evolving role, suited to someone who is adaptable, curious, and motivated to develop their professional skills in a changing technological and organisational environment. If you are passionate about metadata, collaboration, and enabling access to collections at a national and international level, we would be delighted to hear from you.

For one of the posts, language expertise to degree level in French and/or German is essential; for the other two posts it is desirable.

About us

We are the national library of the UK and we are here for everyone. Our shelves hold over 170 million items – a living collection that gets bigger every day. Although our roots extend back centuries, we aim to collect everything published in the UK today, tomorrow and far into the future. Our trusted experts care for this collection and open it up for everyone to spark new discoveries, ideas and to help people do incredible things.

LIS Customer Services Assistant
Location: University of Chester
Contract Type: Fixed term, Part time (20 hours/week)
Salary: £25,249 to £25,804
Closing Date: Sunday 17 May 2026

Are you passionate about books, helping people, and creating calm, welcoming spaces? We’re looking for a part time (20 hours per week) Customer Services Assistant to join our Learning and Information Services (LIS) team at the University of Chester, based in Warrington, with a strong focus on library services.

In this role, you’ll be supporting the day‑to‑day running of our library, helping students and staff, learning resources and study spaces. You’ll provide friendly, approachable assistance at service points, help with borrowing and returning items, shelving and maintaining book stock, and ensuring the library remains an organised, inviting environment where everyone feels comfortable and supported.

Working closely with the Customer Services Team Leader, you’ll play an important part in delivering a positive library experience. You’ll answer enquiries, assist users with finding books and resources, and help students feel confident using the library – whether they’re new to university life or regular library users. You’ll also help keep our learning spaces tidy, safe and ready for use.

This is a part‑time, fixed‑term role until the end of July 2027, working 20 hours per week, Monday, Tuesday and Mornings on a Wednesday. Occasional travel to other University sites may be required.

Join us and be part of a friendly Customer Service team that supports learning, curiosity and the student experience every day.

Project Archivist (York Archdiocesan Archive)
Location: University of York
Grade/Salary: Grade 6/£37,694 – £46,049 a year (pro-rata for part-time working)
Contract: Fixed term (Full or part-time)
Closing Date: Monday 18 May 2026

The primary focus of the role is to develop and implement a scoping project to re-catalogue and make available the York Archdiocesan Archive. The Archdiocesan archive is one of our largest and oldest collections, spanning 1225 to the present day. Full access to the Archdiocesan Archive is limited by the lack of a complete ISAD(G)-compliant catalogue. The archive has been catalogued in various tranches since our founding in 1953 and is comprised of manuscript, paper and legacy digital finding aids.

The post holder will work to develop and implement a future funded scoping project, which will focus on creating a new, overarching catalogue for the archive, making use of past finding aids and implementing new strategies for arrangement and description to give a fully holistic view of this wide-ranging, complex and fascinating archive.

The post is suitable for an experienced archivist who wishes to further develop their arrangement and description skills using the distinctive AtoM platform, and to link the archive explicitly with the semi-current and current records of a continuing organisation.

The post-holder will be based in Archives and Research Collections (Borthwick Institute for Archives), at the University of York. The post-holder will work closely with a team of other archivists and will liaise with and report to a Project Board comprising Borthwick archivists and Archdiocesan and Diocesan officers.

When appointing to this role the University must ensure that it meets any applicable immigration requirements, including salary thresholds which are applicable to some visas. It may not be possible to offer Skilled Worker sponsorship for this role.

The postholder will:

• Develop and, where appropriate, implement dedicated plans to open up the Archdiocesan archive via the creation of collection level descriptions, full file-level indexes and relevant authority files
• Broaden our potential user base by allowing off-site users to discover collections by promoting holdings via social and traditional media.
• Enable us to gain further experience and development of skills in the use of the AtoM cataloguing package
• Support information management by specifying information relating to intellectual property rights and access restrictions/exemptions.
• Facilitate potential community engagement with collection development, including with stakeholders in the Archdiocese
• Facilitate the exploitation of the archives for research

This is a fixed term post for either 6 months Full-Time or 12 months part-time (18.50 hours a week).

Shelving and Logistics Team Member (2 posts)
Location: University of Liverpool
Grade/Salary: Grade 2, £24,547 pa
Duration: 6 months fixed term
Closing Date: Monday 25 May 2026

The University of Liverpool’s Libraries, Museums & Galleries are looking for enthusiastic and motivated individuals to join our Shelving and Logistics Team on a 6 month fixed term contract, starting as soon as possible.

This is a great opportunity for anyone interested in gaining hands-on experience in a busy academic library environment, working both as part of a supportive team and independently. This is an active, practical role at the heart of our library operations. You’ll contribute to essential project work, including:

– Stock checking and inventory accuracy
– A major stock reorganisation project

Alongside project tasks, you’ll also support the team’s day to day work to keep our collections accessible and well maintained for students, staff, and visitors. The role involves regular manual handling, and moving stock across library spaces.

We’re seeking someone who is:

– Positive, helpful and self-motivated
– Neat, organised and methodical approach to work
– Able to work well both in a team and independently
– Flexible and adaptable to changing tasks
– Accurate and efficient when filing

Hours: Both full time (35 hours per week) and part time (17.5 hours per week) options are available. All will fall within 9am-5pm Monday to Friday.
Location: University Libraries on University of Liverpool Campus; with possibility of some activities at our off-site storage facility at Brunswick dock.

Reading for Pleasure Administrator
Location: Open University
Salary: £27,319 to £30,378 (pro rata for part time hours)
Contract Type: Permanent, 11 hours/week
Closing Date: Monday 25 May 2026

The Open University is the UK’s largest university, a world leader in flexible part-time education combining a mission to widen access to higher education with research excellence, transforming lives through education. Find out more about us and our mission by watching this short video (you will be taken to YouTube by clicking this link).

About the Role
The Open University is recruiting for an Administrator to work in The Open University’s Reading for Pleasure (RfP) Research and Practice Coalition which is the flagship of the Literacy and Social Justice Centre. The Coalition focuses on promoting volitional reading within and beyond schools to improve children and young people’s literacy outcomes, wider attainment and well-being. It frames reading as a ‘right’, emphasising the “will” over the “skills” of reading and works to foster a lifelong love of reading in the young. The team’s diverse professional development, programmes, consultancy, evaluations and knowledge exchange work involves schools, teachers, librarians, charities, literacy organisations, authors, publishers and many others. We are seeking an administrator to support this work and its accompanying website.

Key Responsibilities

• Creating and maintaining a detailed budget spreadsheet, including tracking income and expenditure, raising invoices, purchase orders, external consultancy requests, managing regular payments to external organisations as well as internal expenses, booking travel and accommodation.
• Managing individual payments to external companies including charitable donations.
• Administration of elements of the Reading and Writing Schools Programmes, Teacher Reading Groups, Higher Education Institution Partners, Student Teacher Ambassador Scheme, Awards (Harper Collins, OU and UKLA Award, and Student Award) including the coordination of ordering and delivery of associated resources, and managing the members-only area of the website.
• Editing and uploading material to our website, liaising with the website designer to resolve more complex technical issues and creating and/or publishing posts.
• Supporting conference organisation including liaison with the team, the Events Office, Catering, Security and technical assistance.
• Creating Eventbrite pages, with hidden discounts, registration forms, developing and publishing event promotions.
• Drafting and distributing comprehensive conference pre-event emails, event signage, materials and badging.
• Supporting the delivery of online seminars, including the creation of Eventbrite registrations, setting up and managing the administration of large Zoom/Microsoft Teams meetings.
• Editing and maintaining intranet pages for the Literacy and Social Justice Centre.

Acquisition Processing Team Member 
Location: British Library (Boston Spa)
Salary: £25,179 per annum
Contract: Full Time, Fixed Term
Closing Date: Monday 8 June 2026

About the role

The British Library is seeking to recruit four people to join the Acquisition Processing teams based at our Boston Spa site. The teams are responsible for acquiring and processing print and/or digital content in accordance with the British Library’s content development strategy. You will be working within a team-based environment, and the main duties include ordering of monograph and serial titles, the accurate recording of items to be added to the collections, as well as dealing with enquiries from suppliers/publishers with regards to the acquisition/ingest of material.

Therefore, we are looking for someone with the following essential skills:

– Strong service delivery and customer focus with proven ability to meet deadlines/targets;

– Computer literate, good working knowledge of Microsoft Outlook, Word and Excel, and proven ability at working with PCs to retrieve or create data;

– Displays initiative in problem solving and prioritising duties;

– Ability to display a flexible approach and work as part of a team;

– Good oral and written communication skills in order to liaise with both internal and external parties.

Due to the nature of the role, the day-to-day handling of collection items, and related workflows, successful candidates would be required to work predominantly on site.

For more information, please refer to the Job Profile.

About us

We are the national library of the UK and we are here for everyone. Our shelves hold over 170 million items – a living collection that gets bigger every day. Although our roots extend back centuries, we aim to collect everything published in the UK today, tomorrow and far into the future. Our trusted experts care for this collection and open it up for everyone to spark new discoveries, ideas and to help people do incredible things.