Academic staff at London's School of Oriental and African Studies (Soas) were today meeting to call off strike action after management agreed to reinstate two specialist librarians at the centre of a five-month dispute.
The move will be welcomed by academic librarians at other UK universities, who fear that they are being downgraded in national negotiations over academic jobs.
Members of the Association of University Teachers (AUT) were today called to an emergency meeting at the school after a settlement was reached with Colin Bundy, the director of Soas.
Graham Dyer, the union's spokesman, said the AUT executive would be recommending acceptance and thanked Professor Bundy for his efforts in reaching a settlement.
The lecturers had demanded the reinstatement of Fujiko Kobayashi and Sue Small, specialist librarians in Japan, Korea and China, saying they were needed to maintain the specialist library at the school which is funded as a national resource.
Their sacking from one of the UK's leading specialist libraries prompted AUT members to vote for concerted strike action and talks on Friday at the conciliation service, Acas, did not appear to have produced agreement. Fourteen academics have resigned posts at the school, though not their jobs, in protest.
Ms Small, who is currently in China, is expected back at her desk in Soas by the end of the week.
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 1.2 million 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.
