Beyond the Stacks: A Sneak Peek into Library Staff Engagement with Job Shadowing

Event Details

Do your library teams struggle to stay in touch with each other? Do your staff sometimes not know the function of other teams within your libraries, and who to turn to with a problem?

The University of Nottingham Libraries Training and Development team saw just that and wanted an engaging way to combat it. Thus, our Libraries Job Shadowing scheme was born.

Job Shadowing is a way for staff to spend time with another team, learning what they do and providing the lightbulb moments when the pieces of the library jigsaw fall into place. The scheme upskills staff and improves staff engagement but also promotes cross team collaboration.

Our Speakers:

Ayesha Thompson is a Chartered Librarian and has been at the University of Nottingham as a Resource Acquisitions Librarian since 2019. Managing a team of Acquisitions Assistants, she is an advocate for upskilling and developing staff members, leading to her joining the UoN Training and Development group and helping to found the Libraries Job Shadowing scheme. She is also passionate about equality and diversity and currently serves on UoN Libraries EDI Project Board.

Chris Addleton is the Operations Manager for Libraries at the University of Nottingham for 6 years. As part of his role, he leads the Libraries Training and Development group. An important output of this group is the Job Shadowing scheme that has now been running for three years. He also represents Libraries on the EDI professional services committee and leads on inclusive recruitment and retention. In other parts of his role, Chris leads on all compliance work associated with the risk register and information security.

Cristina Rusu is Copyright and Licensing Manager as well as Senior Library Assistant at Loughborough University. She joined the Open Research Library Team in 2022, and has since completed an MA in Information and Library Studies at Aberystwyth University. She is currently juggling multiple projects on copyright literacy, from interactive online short courses, guides, infographics, comics to videos around copyright. She recently presented a lightning talk at CILIP’s Copyright Conference 2024, on targeted copyright literacy.

This event is part of NAG Webinar Week 2025; all sessions are free and open to everyone.  Open Access recordings will be available on the NAG website shortly after the event.  Join the conversation on BlueSky at #NAGWebinarWeek.