Job Description
Position Details
Academic Services
Location: University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham UK
Full time starting salary is normally in the range £27,166 to £28,768, with potential progression once in post to £32,145
Grade: 4
Full Time, Permanent
Closing date: 13th August 2025
Our offer to you
People are at the heart of what we are and do.
The University of Birmingham is proud to have been a part of the City of Birmingham and the wider region for over 100 years, and we are equally proud to be recognised as a leading global university. We want to attract talented people from across the city and beyond, support them to succeed, and celebrate their success.
We are committed to helping the people who work here to develop through our sector-leading Birmingham Professional programme which provides all professional services staff with development opportunities and the encouragement to reach their full potential. With almost 5,000 professional services jobs in a wide-range of functions in Edgbaston and in our campus in Dubai, there are plenty of opportunities for you to be able to develop your career at the University.
We believe there is no such thing as a typical member of staff and that diversity is a source of strength that underpins the exchange of ideas, innovation, and debate. We warmly welcome people from all backgrounds and are committed to fostering an inclusive environment where diversity is at the heart of who and what we are, and how we work.
Supporting our people to achieve a healthy work/life balance is important both to our employees and to the success of the University and, depending on the role, we offer a variety of flexible working arrangements. We therefore welcome discussions on all forms of flexible working. In addition, you will receive a generous package of benefits including 40 days paid holiday a year, one paid day a year for volunteering, occupational sick pay, and a pension scheme. We also have three high quality subsidised day nurseries.
The University is situated in leafy Edgbaston and there are excellent transport links to our beautiful campus, including main bus routes and a train station on site. On campus we have a state-of-the-art sports centre with pool, shops, places to eat and drink, our own art gallery, museum and botanical gardens.
Find out more about the benefits of working for the University of Birmingham
Role Summary
You will act as a key point of contact for the full range of library customers (internal and external). You will provide advice to colleagues within the Special Collections libraries and the wider University. When senior staff are not on site you will use your initiative and take responsibility for the service. To flexibly use resource, you may be offered the opportunity to work elsewhere in the department or the wider University.
In order to aid your development into a qualified archivist, the University will offer to pay 50% of course fees on a registered ARA distance learning course relating to Archive Management
Main Duties
Generic duties:
- Taking responsibility, on a rota basis with other staff, the delivery of the public enquiry service and the delivery of reading room invigilation ensuring readers’ compliance with Special Collections regulations, facilitating readers’ research in the use of collections and resources, and advising on the use of various electronic and paper finding aids.
- Taking responsibility for opening and closing the department on occasions, checking the security of both the building and the collections.
- Supporting and delivering customer relationship activity such as surveys, feedback, and events.
- Intervening when issues are reported such as noise, eating, incident reporting and lost property, and identifying appropriate referral routes for students in academic or physical/mental distress.
- Helping with navigation in the buildings, the use of facilities and appointments with staff working in the building; library equipment support.
- Assisting with teaching and engagement activities and helping to promote the University and the Special Collections libraries to visitors and potential students, for example, by conducting library tours.
- Training of colleagues within Special Collections e.g. staff inductions.
- All Special Collections Assistants are expected to participate in rotas which enable the department to provide staffed services during advertised opening hours. This may include occasional evening or weekend work, both within their usual team and, where necessary, in other teams within Special Collections.
- Special Collections Assistants will ensure that the service runs smoothly when managers are not present by:
- Coordinating the work of colleagues, if applicable.
- Provide support to colleagues and service users during difficult situations (such as unhappy library users, security alerts, fire evacuations etc.).
- Liaising as necessary with University Security and with agency security staff working in Special Collections.
- Contacting senior Special Collections staff as necessary for guidance.
- Reporting back to the relevant managers and informing them of issues and problems which have arisen.
- Supports equality and values diversity, moderates own behaviour to avoid unfair discriminatory impact or bias.
- Supports equality and values diversity, moderates own behaviour to avoid unfair discriminatory impact or bias on other.
Post holders will undertake work in the following Functional Areas:
Front of House
- Staffing the service desks: welcoming library users and providing directions to facilities and services; registering new users and visitors to the Library; answering queries regarding access control, membership, room booking, visitor day pass systems, handling all issues from initial contact to resolution; providing information regarding other University facilities and events which are taking place on campus; making appropriate referrals to colleagues within and beyond Library Services.
- Providing an efficient and effective retrievals service for rare book and archive materials, ensuring correct handling procedures are followed at all times.
- Maintaining records of external members of Special Collections; undertaking administration relating to reciprocal access schemes, corresponding with registered external users regarding membership renewal; updating publications and information regarding external access to the University’s libraries.
- Ensuring the Special Collections library spaces are all well maintained and prepared in readiness for events; checking layouts of furniture, ensuring IT equipment is in place and reporting problems as appropriate; supporting events and ensuring a high-quality customer experience.
Enquiry Services
- Supporting researchers, students and staff to gain maximum benefit from the extensive range of physical and electronic resources managed by the Library; achieved by understanding the needs of users, providing initial advice in relation to different information resources and advising on relevant search techniques.
- Deliver a high-quality reprographics scanning service. For staff based at the Cadbury Research Library, this forms a significant proportion of work.
- Explaining library procedures for reserving and requesting information resources and identifying improvements to workflows to ensure service quality is continually improved.
- Providing support with basic/intermediate first line IT enquiries relating to password self-service system, printing, Wi-Fi, email, Canvas, cluster PCs.
- Refer users to specialists within Special Collections. Handling and signposting requests for support (for example, from users with access requirements, or those requiring additional skills support).
Collection Management
- Assisting with making collections accessible by undertaking basic cataloguing of archive and rare book materials under the supervision of appropriate professional staff in compliance with International Standard of Archival Description (General), book cataloguing standards, and in-house cataloguing guidelines.
- Correcting and improving existing finding aids.
- Inputting catalogue entries into archive cataloguing software.
- Undertaking rare book processing activities.
- Making entries available through the Special Collections online catalogues and through the University web pages.
Required Knowledge, Skills, Qualifications, Experience
- Educated to A level or equivalent qualification level, or substantial equivalent relevant experience.
- Substantial practical experience of customer support.
- Good numeracy, literacy and classification skills with excellent interpersonal and communication skills.
- Comprehensive knowledge, understanding and the ability to use complex and specialist processes (e.g. for archive and rare book cataloguing).
- Ability to act as the escalation point and source of advice for Library Assistants on many different specialist processes, IT systems and databases.
- Ability to work with accuracy to required standards and deadlines and to demonstrate attention to detail.
- Good organisational skills with the ability to plan own work and that of others.
- Demonstrable ability to work both independently and as part of a team.
- Proven ability to work reliably and flexibly in a busy environment, preferably in a library or in a busy customer focused environment.
- Excellent and demonstrable customer service skills.
- Experience of receiving and resolving customer enquiries and the ability and willingness to adopt a friendly customer orientated approach in a busy service environment.
- Good communication skills including the ability to ensure action or acceptance by a colleague or customer by listening to and understanding another person’s request or perspective, influencing, and providing a well-reasoned response.
- Good IT literacy including Microsoft office and online systems. In addition, the ability and willingness to further develop skills in this area and to learn and adapt to new technologies.
- Knowledge and substantial practical experience of using many different specialist processes, IT systems (e.g. library management systems or equivalent) and databases (e.g. for catalogue systems)
- Understands the importance of equality and diversity in the workplace.
- Ability to identify and respond to equality and diversity issues in line with relevant policies and procedures.
Dimensions
You will have supervisory responsibilities when senior staff are not on site, but no budgetary responsibilities.
Planning and organising
Advice is available, but most of your work will be completed independently. You will be responsible for managing your own time, planning/anticipating and prioritising your workload to meet deadlines (typically for weeks and months ahead), ensuring you meet the required standard of service and its continuity. As part of this you will balance the need for accurate and professional work with meeting targets.
Problem solving and decision making
As a key communications point you will resolve issues that arise. If there are more complex issues you will be able to consult with senior staff for a resolution. You will suggest service improvements to your manager.
Internal and external relationships
You will have contact with a wide range of staff, students and external visitors and ensure the delivery of a quality service.
Informal enquiries to Mark Williams, email:
[email protected]View our staff values and behaviours here
We believe there is no such thing as a 'typical' member of University of Birmingham staff and that diversity in its many forms is a strength that underpins the exchange of ideas, innovation and debate at the heart of University life. We are committed to proactively addressing the barriers experienced by some groups in our community and are proud to hold Athena SWAN, Race Equality Charter and Disability Confident accreditations. We have an Equality Diversity and Inclusion Centre that focuses on continuously improving the University as a fair and inclusive place to work where everyone has the opportunity to succeed. We are also committed to sustainability, which is a key part of our strategy. You can find out more about our work to create a fairer university for everyone on our website . 
