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Finding International LIS Jobs

The following post is an updated reprint of a column I originally wrote for Rethinking Information Careers, part of Rachel Singer Gordon’s LisJobs.com site. Although I’ve verified/corrected all of the links, my guess is that other, additional resources have come into being since I wrote this, so please add ones I’ve missed in the comments section!

If your wanderlust is right up there with your passion for, say, information literacy or tracking down answers to the toughest reference questions, then an international LIS position might be a perfect match for you.

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What Else Can You Do With Your LIS Skills? Identifying Job Possibilities

Considering transitioning from a traditional LIS job to a job outside the familiar library roles? One of the biggest challenges you’ll face is figuring out how your traditional skill set “maps” to non-LIS positions.

In an effort to create a group of questions that could be replicated for each LIS role, I decided to take one job – reference librarian – and see how it could be taken apart as an LIS role and then parsed into non-LIS opportunities. A caveat here: I’ve never actually been a reference librarian, but have colleagues who’ve been willing to share their reference-librarian experiences with me, so this represents my best-guess interpretation of basic reference-librarian skills.

Here’s the process I would go through to map this role:

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Where Will We Fit In?

One of the ongoing challenges LIS students and professionals face is trying to figure out what skills, experience, and attitudes will enable us to make a viable contribution in the evolving workplace, be it traditional facilities-based librarianship, special librarianship, or some type of alternative LIS work.

In an effort to nail down some (any!) answers to this tough question, I tend to read as much as I can about the future of work in organizations, and recently came across an interesting publication published March 10, 2011, by the Aspen Institute, “The Future of Work: What It Means for Individuals, Businesses, Markets and Governments,” by David Bollier.

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