As the academic year draws to a close, it’s the perfect time to reflect on the wonderful contributions made by our Professional Pathways students during their work placements with us in the Library.

This year we were delighted to welcome three students who worked across different teams within Library Services and quickly became integral members of staff.

Our Placement Students

Tayyibah Shabbir, Communications, Quality and Marketing team

Tayyibah brought a unique blend of psychological insight, first-hand experience as an Aberystwyth student, and a genuine passion for reading; qualities that made her an invaluable addition to our service. Her love for libraries was also apparent right from the start and we hope her time with us has helped nurture that passion!

Tayyibah quickly became a driving force behind several of our initiatives. She coordinated creative book displays in the Hugh Owen Library to mark key events such as University Mental Health Day and Valentine’s Day, bringing both awareness and a sense of fun to our spaces.

Her understanding of the student experience also proved instrumental in the launch of our AU Library News newsletter. Tayyibah helped shape content that resonated with students throughout the academic year, ensuring that our communications remained timely and relevant.

Her analytical skills truly shone in her work on service evaluation and user experience. Tayyibah assisted with data collection through a variety of research techniques, including helping with our What Students Think About Noise in Libraries workshop and conducting observational studies at our Library Floormaps kiosks. The insights she gathered have already helped us identify areas where some students need more support in navigating the library. Thanks to her recommendations, we’re now developing new resources to make finding books and using our services even easier.

Tayyibah’s achievements were recognised at the Professional Pathways celebration event on 11th June, where she was invited to present on her placement experience.

Kirill Kulikovskii, Academic Engagement team

Kirill Kulikovskii, a Computer Science student, had his Professional Pathways placement with the Academic Engagement team in the Library. He developed a Python script for use to identify broken links across a range of resource types in Aspire Reading Lists which have now been fixed. He also liaised with IT staff to arrange for the script to be added to the University’s company portal so it can be downloaded and used by staff to check for new broken links occurring in the future.

This was a really successful placement and Kirill was nominated and shortlisted for the Undeb Aber Student Staff Member of the Year Award 2025.

Ewan Price, Digital Skills team

Ewan Price completed his Professional Pathways Placement with the Digital Skills Team. He firstly created a series of DigiTips to help students and staff develop their digital skills, Ewan’s DigiTips ranged from using graphs in Excel to being more effective in Teams through using commands.

You can read all our DigiTips here!

Ewan also helped maintain our Digital Skills Library through checking all the resources to make sure they were still appropriate and applicable to our users – staff and students alike.

Lastly, Ewan’s biggest project was to create a brand-new SharePoint site “Digital Essentials for Staff” to help new staff navigate all things digital they may need to know when they begin working at Aberystwyth University. Ewan successfully harvested resources, mapped a logical layout for the site and worked collaboratively with the other members of the working group to decide on content and design. He also developed his facilitation skills and communication skills by liaising with stakeholders at the university to collect feedback to improve the resource before it will be launched.

Ewan was a great asset to the team over the last few months and made completing these projects possible with his expertise in Computer Science and a new perspective to how we deliver our resources.

Looking Ahead

We are incredibly proud of what our Professional Pathways students have achieved during their time with us. Their enthusiasm, curiosity, and willingness to learn, as well as their individual skills and insights brought fresh perspectives and energy to our work. It has been inspiring to watch their confidence grow as they took on new challenges, collaborated with colleagues, and saw the positive impact of their work on library users.

We wish them the best of luck in their future careers!