The Bunheads are Dead

Conjure up a picture of today’s librarian, and you are likely to be wrong. Professional librarians are information analysts, freedom of information and protection of privacy officers, family literacy specialists, Internet trainers, teen specialists, genealogists, web designers and technologists, database managers, historical researchers, information brokers … indeed, few have the title of “librarian” but all have the master’s degree in Library and Information Science (LIS).

These days, your school librarian more likely than not is a teacher or part-time aide assigned to library duty. And the customer service desks at your public library more likely are staffed with paraprofessionals. Today’s MLIS holders are typically managers of agencies, departments, and systems -less visible to the public than the frontline trained technicians and assistants that they oversee, and highly skilled in emerging technologies like Web 2.0 and Second Life.

Graduate LIS programs are appealing to a younger and more diverse student population, yet recruitment is still problematic due to misconceptions about the career and the little-known fact that the first professional degree is at the master’s level. Yes, you do need a master’s degree, but not to “check out books” as the stereotype suggests.

MLIS students learn higher-order analytical skills for assessing community information needs (whether for a municipality or in the private sector), developing collections of resources to meet those needs, designing programs and services to exploit those resources, and assessing the effectiveness and impact of implemented services.

Best-career buzz

The overall career dome of “information professional” is a hot commodity these days. U.S. News and World Report included “librarian” in its list of the 31 best careers of 2009. High growth is also expected within the related information technology career paths of computer systems managers and analysts as well as database administrators, web designers and web developers, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. And with the looming retirement of over half the current workforce (two out of every three librarians are over the age of 45), traditional librarians will be in demand as well, along with archivists who can cross over from paper-based collections to emerging electronic and digital formats.

The outlook is also strong for the longer term. The World Future Society recently named the top “high-paying careers of the next two decades,” and two of the six were related to library and information science: bioinformationalists who work with the abundant genetic information being generated and serve as a bridge between scientists and those developing drugs and genetic therapies; and cybrarians who will monitor, organize, and enforce policies on an exponentially growing Internet. Both of these jobs exist now, although with different titles-bioinformatics specialist, researcher, information policy analyst, and electronic records manager, for example-positions often held by professional librarians.

This puts the pressure squarely on the 60 programs offering the accredited MLIS degree in the United States and Canada to keep up with the changing needs of the industry, and they have accepted the challenge. A recent survey of LIS programs by Heting Chu at Long Island University’s Palmer School of Library and Information Science showed that nearly 30% of new course offerings covered the topics of digital libraries, website design and applications, computer and information networks, and digital preservation. Following that were courses on cyberspace law and policy, knowledge management, competitive intelligence, human-computer interaction, and computer security. These certainly aren’t the subjects generally associated with a traditional librarian, and signal the dawning of a new direction for the industry as a whole. And while library science has always required a unique combination of right brain/left brain skills, we now are seeing a greater melding of the LIS field with other disciplines, such as business, communications, graphic arts, education, history, urban development, social service, human rights, law, psychology, and computer science. Further, people who began their careers in each of those fields are being drawn to LIS as a second career opportunity.

LIS programs generally require a core foundation for professional librarians regardless of a preferred career path, and beginning courses in the master’s program will introduce students to the foundations of the profession.

Topics covered include the core values of equitable access to information, intellectual freedom, confidentiality and privacy of records, information tools and technologies, information design and retrieval, management and leadership, and research methods. Students may then choose to specialize or pursue a general program. There are four common environments for professional librarians-in academic settings such as colleges and universities; in public libraries as community information and popular reading centers; in schools as “teacher-librarians”; and in the corporate, government, and nonprofit sectors as information specialists. Courses address the needs of particular client groups from preschoolers, children, and teens to lawyers and medical practitioners. Some pursue one area exclusively, like information systems and technology, while most choose a more general approach.

Graduates may opt to pursue independent and entrepreneurial careers as information brokers and researchers/ writers or craft their own positions, such as a medical information officer in a clinic.