Management and lecturers at London's School of Oriental and African Studies (Soas) are today due to hold talks at the conciliation service Acas, after staff voted in favour of strike action over library redundancies.
The sacking of two librarians from one of the UK's leading specialist libraries prompted members of the Association of University Teachers at the school to vote for yesterday for concerted strike action. Of the 160 staff who voted (65% of the membership), 80% backed strike and 87% supported action short of a strike.
Fourteen academics have resigned posts at the school, though not their jobs, in protest.
The union is calling for the reinstatement of Fujiko Kobayashi and Sue Small, specialists in Japan, Korea and China. Today the two sides are holding meetings with Acas officials in an effort to resolve the issue of redundancies which academics fear will damage the school's reputation and have an impact on the forthcoming research assessment exercise.
The school, part of the University of London, boasts "one of the world's most important academic libraries for the study of Africa, Asia and the Middle East, which attracts scholars from all over the world to conduct research".
But maintaining a library of 1.2m volumes in languages as diverse as Japanese, Swahili, Thai, Tibetan and Arabic is extremely expensive - it needs a wide range of staff just to put books on the right shelves.
Soas management declined to comment in advance of today's talks. Graham Dyer, AUT spokesman at Soas, said reinstatement of the specialist librarians was a precondition of a settlement.
All staff are due to have their jobs evaluated under a national agreement, and the AUT is concerned to prevent academic librarians being downgraded before that happens. Mr Dyer said the Chinese, Japanese and Korean collections at Soas needed staff with specialist knowledge.
