Library Office at House of Lords (UK Parliament) Recruitment 2024 Library Assistant

This is a Level 3 Library Assistant post. The purpose of the role is to work as part of a team of Library Assistants who:

Helped provide library services to members and staff of the House of Lords and contributed to the efficient administration of the library’s collections and services.

This is an exciting opportunity to gain practical experience working in a library. This will involve helping to provide access to library collections for customers by ensuring the Library suite is ready for use, displaying newspapers, accurately retrieving and re-shelving of stock, and maintaining the journal collection. All were carried out to agreed timescales and in adherence to related policies and procedures. Excellent customer services are expected from all Library staff.

Responsibilities of the Post:

Working with the library assistant team on the following shared responsibilities:

• Displaying, logging and filing newspapers in the Library suites. Reporting issues to supplier.
• Library start up tasks to ensuring main Library suite is ready for use: replenishing stationery, checking paper and toner levels in photocopiers, cleaning photocopier glass, and tidying. Ensuring all Library offices have a sufficient supply of paper and toner.
• Open, correctly sort and distribute incoming mail and collect and distribute parliamentary papers.
• Filing, shelving, labelling and weeding of journals to ensure they are easy to locate in the Library.
• Retrieve and re-shelve books held in onsite collections and nearby off-site archives. Assisting with small scale book moves. This will involve manual handling and some use of ladders.
• Processing new books to assist the cataloguers: printing classmark spine labels, labelling and adding barcodes using the Koha library management system.
• Provide other administrative or collection-based assistance to the Library as required, covering for or assisting colleagues within the Library Assistant team (eg: checking in journals).

Qualifications

No essential qualifications are needed for this post.

The knowledge, skills and experience required for the post are outlined below. Each element will be assessed in the examples you provide in your application form. Should you be shortlisted these areas will be assessed in more depth at interview and, if appropriate, in a test.

Criteria: 

• IT Skills – Good all-round IT skills, including the ability to use Excel.
• Good communication skills: Ability to communicate effectively, both orally and in writing.
• Team working: Able to work well within a team and support/respect other team membersand to develop good working relationships.
• Good time Management: Ability to organise own time when working under pressure and meet deadlines.
• Flexible, adaptable and able to deal with change; a willingness to learn and ability to use initiative and develop problem-solving skills.
• Attention to Detail: Excellent attention to detail and ability to maintain a high level of accuracy and motivation when performing routine tasks.

Salary and allowances
The post is paid in accordance with House of Lords grade HL3 (£24,620 per annum). Pay increases usually depend on performance as assessed in annual performance reviews, up to the current band maximum of £27,000.
Salary is paid monthly by bank transfer.

Probation
There is a probationary period of six months.

Term and hours
This post is fixed term until 31st August 2025 and is for 36 hours per week.

Pension
The House of Lords participates in the Civil Service Pension Schemes. As an employee of the House, you will be entitled to join one of these highly competitive pension scheme arrangements.

Annual leave
Annual leave entitlement is 30 days (increasing to 35 days after one year’s service) plus public and bank holidays. In most offices annual leave may be taken only during periods when the House is in recess and must always be agreed in advance with the line manager and Head of Office.