Career Opportunities for Library Science Graduates

chillibreeze writer — Shubhra Mutt

Libraries are the reservoirs of knowledge and information and the position of a librarian is seen as one that provides ample opportunities to work with storage, organization, and maintenance of books, papers and journals. Library science is a vast subject and deals with the classification of knowledge and information. In the past few years, it has made considerable progress with the other branches of social and natural science.

The process of education has changed over the years, as has the advancement of technology. The concept of libraries has also evolved changed - they are no more considered as storehouse of books, manuscripts, and records. That age-old concept has been redesigned and today libraries are the place to hit if you're looking for CDs, DVDs, Internet access, and virtual databases just to name a few.

Librarians are now known as Information Professionals because today libraries have become centers of providing various types of information and play an important role in research on various fields.

There are three basic services that library science graduates can specialize in and then pursue as career options. The user service focuses on instructional roles such as acquiring and providing information, analyzing users’ needs, and showing users how to find and evaluate information. In technical services, acquisitions and cataloguing are the most important aspects. Acquiring, preparing, and classifying the information materials along with writing abstracts and summaries are conducted by librarians as part of this role. In administrative services, the management and planning of the libraries are generally considered with budgeting, fundraising duties, performing public-relations, supervising the staff, and also direct activities to ensure that everything functions properly.

Library science graduates can work as librarians in school, colleges, and universities or in other academic libraries. Generally assisting the readers is the prime job in these cases. There are some specialized libraries where the professionals provide information on specific topics and fields such as medicine. Preparing abstracts and indices of current periodicals, organizing the bibliographies, and analyzing the information for the benefit of the readers are some of the tasks under this role.

Even in large corporates, there are numerous opportunities where information professionals can collect, analyze, and prepare reports for further expansion of business and also evaluating their present competitors. There are Government Document Libraries where these professionals can preserve and disseminate government publications, records and other documents for historical records of government actions. Bookstores are very common which resembles public library, library science graduates get ample opportunities to explore and utilize their skill.

With the proliferation of the Internet, information is available to us in matter of seconds. So information professionals can apply their management and research skills outside libraries in database development, reference tool development, information systems, publishing, Internet coordination, marketing, Web content management and design, and training of database users. They can also start their own consulting practices, acting as freelance librarians or information brokers and providing services to other libraries, businesses, or government agencies.

As a library science graduate, you can opt for full time or part time jobs in various libraries. Do remember though that these jobs require you to spend a lot of time on the computer. Moreover, assisting users is quite challenging as it requires detailed information within less time span which at times can be very stressful.

In special libraries mostly in fast-paced industries like legal services, advertising agencies occasionally have long working hours but in school libraries the work is less challenging. It is certain that there would be an increase in the employment rate but with the advancement in the use of Internet and other technologies there are chances that few professionals would be recruited in traditional settings, there would be much scope in the specialized fields.

There are lots of opportunities in non-traditional librarian jobs like working as information brokers and working for private corporations, non-profit organizations, and consulting firms. Many companies prefer library science professionals of their research and organizational skills and their knowledge of computer databases and library automation systems. As these information professionals can review vast amounts of information and analyze, evaluate, and organize it according to a company's specific needs thus, there are ample career opportunities for library science graduates.

Chillibreeze's disclaimer: This is a contributed article and was published on Chillibreeze in April, 2010. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the views of Chillibreeze as a company. Chillibreeze has a strict anti-plagiarism policy. Please contact us to report any copyright issues related to this article. The relevance of the facts and figures cited (if any) could change after a period of time.

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