by infonistaadmin | Feb 11, 2016 | Career Profiles, LIS Career Options
Full disclosure here, everything I know about digital asset management I owe to the good graces and generous knowledge-sharing of Deb Fanslow, MLIS (above), a contributor to one of the key resources in this field, DAMNews, aka “Digital Asset Management News, Reviews, Trends & Opinion.” I had an opportunity to interview Deb for a client project, and was fascinated by the breadth and variety of career opportunities digital asset management represents. (See more about Deb here, here, and here.) (more…)
by infonistaadmin | Feb 10, 2013 | LIS Career Options, Uncategorized
One of the questions that have come up on the LIS Career Options LinkedIn group is what types of titles to search for when looking for alternative LIS positions. This list below, which I put together for my Alternative LIS Careers course, is by no means comprehensive, but may help provide a starting point!
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by infonistaadmin | Jun 24, 2012 | LIS Career Options
In his landmark work regarding embedded librarianship, David Shumaker (The Embedded Librarian) has identified an emerging model for special librarianship, one based on a central corporate library or information center that has one or more of its librarians “embedded” in – and working as part of – operational units rather than being located in the library.
However, a related but as yet fairly undefined career path is also evolving, one where librarians who were staff in an existing corporate library are moved into embedded information positions when the corporate library is dissolved. In this case, the librarian is essentially “untethered” from any internal library facility (or resources), creating a very different working dynamic.
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by infonistaadmin | Jul 18, 2011 | LIS Career Options, Uncategorized
One of the most rewarding career paths open to LIS pros is working for LIS vendors; it can be a great way to redeploy both your specific skills and your knowledge of the LIS market. Your knowledge and job experience will be a valuable asset, and depending on the company you work for, you may have a wide range of growth opportunities.
Although you may feel you don’t have the personality for sales (although if you do, there’s some serious money to be made here), there are numerous other roles to play. These could include marketing, market research, account management, product development, external market communications (social/digital media), information/content development and/or management, indexing and abstracting, taxonomy work, customer product training, competitive intelligence research, and user testing, among other roles.
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by infonistaadmin | Jun 4, 2011 | LIS Career Options
Embedded librarianship refers to the delivery of library and/or information services outside of a physical library setting. Often this is as part of an operational team – whether in an academic or business or other organization setting. So, for example, in an academic environment, an embedded librarian might be working as part of an instructional design team for an online course, or working in collaboration with the course instructor to develop, monitor, and grade course assignments.
In a business environment, an embedded librarian might be working as part of the marketing team doing market research, or doing competitive intelligence hand-in-hand with the business development team, or doing patent research for the engineering department.
In a nonprofit organization, an embedded librarian might be working with the donor relations team, or aggregating topical resources as part of the website team, or researching community issues for the community outreach department.
These are basic examples of what can be very innovative roles; the bottom line, however, is that this type of “librarianship” is focused on adding value 1) at the point of need, 2) in a collaborative manner, and 3) with or without the existence of a centralized library. It’s also the role more and more special librarians are transitioning into as their libraries (perceived as overhead) are closed down.
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by infonistaadmin | Apr 10, 2011 | LIS Career Options
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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