I had an interesting conversation today with someone who wondered if librarians -- information professionals -- would work for corporations/businesses as business analysts. He believes that librarians have the right skill set to be very effective analysts. As it turns out, business analysts are in demand and the position pays well.
So, would information professionals/librarians who are coming out of library and information schools now be interested in pursuing careers in that used their skills, but are not "in" libraries? My answer was "maybe." Some library school students really want to work in libraries. And then the question became... How to do find those that would be interested in an alternate career? And I don't know the answer to that. Do you?
It's very difficult. As one who works in a 'transformed' corporate library - which now does information retrieval & analysis over 80% of the time, we are now in an expansion mode - but finding very few candidates (anyone interested?). The difficulty is that you still need those who have the 'soft' librarian skills (reference interview) but also the business acumen and analysis plus information technology skills. Sum up the three, and it's truly a rare breed. (oh, and most people are looking for the five year experience -yikes!) But VERY much in value.
More and more companies (speaking from the corporate level) are digitizing the library and removing the low 'value add' functions - cataloging books, etc. - and the end result for the librarian is getting into information retrieval and analysis. Especially as business development groups are removing their 'low value add' items - which are the analysts. This opens up a niche for the librarian/information professional to fill indeed.
As an '06 MLS grad, I found that few grads were interested in the corporate sector - and fewer still had the combination of traditional library and IT/IS skills to really be hire-able and interested in what is a burgeoning space.
Posted by: Alex | Sunday, December 09, 2007 at 17:36