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COLLEGE LIBRARY TRAINING
College Library Training
Specialised training courses to strengthen your college library’s role in student success. Develop skills in customer care, observation techniques, and student engagement with interactive exercises, mentoring, and personalised feedback. Tailor learning to your college’s needs and improve library services.
- 4 courses
- 3 staff levels
- 2,100+ staff trained
- From £25 per place
Playing your part in the library welcome
A fast, practical and enjoyable course in active customer-care skills, specific to libraries.
Managing first impressions
Learn to see through your students’ eyes and take practical steps to improve your most important spaces.
Observation research
Use these techniques to get beyond a familiar workspace to what your students actually see and do.
Creating themed collections
A versatile toolkit for digital promotions, engaging library displays and confident reader recommendations.
What taking a course actually involves
Interactive exercises
Every course is built around exercises you apply in your own library as well as supporting theory.
Reflect on your own experience
You read through the material and record your own responses as you go, against your own situation.
Slideshows of examples
Worked examples from real libraries show what good looks like before you try it yourself.
Mentoring at Advanced level
On Observation research and Creating themed collections a mentor gives detailed feedback on your tasks and helps you adapt the work to your own college.
Which course for which role
Other courses you may find interesting
We have selected the 4 courses above that work best for college libraries but some further and higher education staff have also taken our public library courses and loved them.
The experience of being able to have your book collections critically evaluated is of course slightly nerve-wracking but in a way that makes you take the time to actually think about the selection. Many thanks for championing the importance of reading for wellbeing. It is something that I feel confident in using within my work at the library now.
I am usually a person that dreads training courses but I actually enjoyed this online training course as it was very informative, easy for me to follow and allowed me to put what I have learned in the course into practice. It has changed the way I look at our library and I will now use the skills I have learnt to merchandise our library shelves and make a more welcome and enjoyable experience for our staff and students.
I really enjoyed the course. It made me think more about our readers, who they are and what they might be interested in. It will help us to create more interesting and off-topic displays. Plus I won’t just pick books that I like!
Practical questions
Are these the same courses public libraries take?
Playing your part and Managing first impressions are exactly the same as the public library versions. Observation research and Creating themed collections have the same course content but the individual mentoring allows the tasks and the assessment to be oriented specifically to a college context.
We're a Learning Resource Centre (LRC) - is this for us?
Library, LRC, Learning Commons, Information Centre - if you have print and digital resources you wish to promote, our courses will be helpful. The skills in customer care, displays and observation apply to the space whatever its name.
Is the training recognised, and do staff get a certificate?
Every learner who successfully completes a course is awarded a Certificate of Achievement. Opening the Book is an officially recognised training provider by CILIP, the UK Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals.
How long do staff have to complete a course?
There are no deadlines set online. Learners start any time and work at their own pace. Managers running a larger rollout often set their own internal deadlines - the most successful rollouts we have seen all do.
Can we pay by invoice or credit card?
Yes. A single place can be bought by card at checkout with fast access - we email login details within one working day. For multiple places we manage quotes and invoices - see how to pay.
Will it run on our college network?
If your machines can browse the web, they can run the courses - there is nothing to install. They work on PCs, Macs and iPads in Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Safari, with JavaScript and cookies enabled. You can read course content on a phone, but the interactive exercises need a larger screen.
Working in a secondary school library rather than a college? There is a separate set of courses written for school libraries.
Secondary school library training →Training for your college library?
For frontline staff, collection librarians and strategic planners – find the right courses for your team.