Resources
Here are the five most helpful resources we encountered in our research.
Dankowski, Terra. “5 Library Jobs on the Rise,” American Libraries Magazine, June 1, 2022.
https://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/2022/06/01/5-library-jobs-on-the-rise/.
Dankowski explains that while job prospects for library workers declined during the pandemic, this trend is reversing and seeing an unprecedented growth as of late 2021 across the nation. One way this growth is happening is through unique roles and nontraditional titles being advertised. This is attributed to the redesign and redefining of libraries during the pandemic, and how new positions are being created to fulfill current needs that reflect core values. These five new job roles are Sustainability Librarian, User Experience Librarian Director of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, Open Educational Resources Librarian, and Data Visualization Librarian. These positions reflect public and user concerns regarding climate change, dual use of libraries online and in person, social justice, and trying to offset the rising cost of living facing many students.
This resource was useful in showing that sometimes our skill sets might be applicable in a new role or a non traditional position. It highlights the need for us to know what we offer the job market and not reduce it to one specific title or role that we can occupy. Additionally, we should consider larger trends and important issues to the public and see how that impacts the changing roles that the profession creates as a response.
Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, Occupational Outlook Handbook, Librarians and Library Media Specialists.
https://www.bls.gov/ooh/education-training-and-library/librarians.htm (visited February 16, 2024).
This resource is a general overview of the labor statistics for Librarians and Library Media Specialists. It gives data on Median Pay, Education requirements, the number of jobs, the job outlook, as well as the work experience and on the job training. It highlights needing a MLIS for this job, but no work experience in a related occupation. There were 141,200 jobs in this role in 2022 and the Job outlook until 2032 is 3% which is the national average for growth rate of an occupation. Also, the Bureau of Labor links to other articles which explain what the work environment is like, what the responsibilities and tasks associated with the position are, and similar occupations that might have a different title but similar duties, pay, job growth and education. Overall, this gives a great snapshot of the field and this role specifically.
This resource gave a hopeful outlook for our ability to get a job after graduating. Sometimes there are conflicting views on job availability, but this demonstrates that information professional positions are experiencing growth instead of decline. These statistics are also in conversation with the American Libraries Magazine article, which highlighted that some of these new positions will have different names than we might expect to see.
Young, Christal. “Library & Information Science,” in Research Guides, USC Libraries. Last updated February 9, 2024.
https://libguides.usc.edu/libsci.
This USC research guide’s intention is to support the USC libraries in the subject areas of library and information science. It features a section with links to Key Online Reference Works in LIS, two of which are dictionaries and the other two are glossaries of terms. One is a multilingual glossary of terms, which I thought was helpful for librarians who speak multiple languages and want to help non-English speaking users. There are other sections for databases, books and ebooks, key journals, professional development, professional associations, library terminology, library careers and citing your sources. Each of these sections contains helpful links and explanations of what is offered and tips to help librarians use these resources.
This guide contains all the relevant information that academic librarians need to access for professional development and in their careers. It contains useful links for both aspiring librarians and career professionals. It is really easy to navigate through and clearly organized and set up.
Saunders, Laura and Wong, Melissa A. “Introduction: Instruction in Libraries and Information Settings” in Instruction in Libraries and Information Centers: An Introduction. Windsor & Downs Press, 2020.
This book chapter gave a great overview of the field, the purpose of instruction librarians and what the responsibilities of the job are. There are activities in each chapter aimed at helping aspiring Instruction Librarians learn about the field and what current Instruction Librarians are doing, what materials and resources they are creating or using. It examines the history and identity of Instruction Librarians, which has been part of the field for over a century. The rise of literacy and education has also increased the number of users that librarians are expected to help, both on the public and academic levels. Looking towards the future, the need for students and people to develop digital literacies has also shifted the focus and outlook of Instruction Librarians. Methods of teaching and assessment are offered in this chapter and a discussion of the audience and outreach of our work, since this is what will require us to shift gears and change tactics as we do our work. The chapter ends with a bibliography of recommended readings for further investigation around being an instruction librarian.
This resource is a great handbook for us as aspiring academic librarians. It is a great guide and offers numerous resources for anyone who is interested in this position. I think it offers a great overview of what is expected of people in this role, what our work involves and also prompts us to start developing ourselves as academic librarians through the activities that they provide in the chapter. There was a lot of overlap between what Jeremy said in our interview, what his day to day looks like and the contents of this chapter.
Association of College & Research Libraries, 2016. Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education. American Library Association.
https://www.ala.org/acrl/sites/ala.org.acrl/files/content/issues/infolit/framework1.pdf.
This framework is proposed by and for academic librarians that comes out of a belief in a richer, more complex set of core ideas that has the potential to realize information literacy as an educational reform movement. It is based upon the affirmation that librarians are holders of a great responsibility to identify core ideas within their own knowledge domain, which has the effect of extending learning for students, creating a new cohesive curriculum for information literacy and more extensive collaboration with faculty. There are six concepts that make up the proposed framework: Authority is Constructed and Contextual, Information Creation as a Process, Information has Value, Research as Inquiry, Scholarship as Conversation, and Searching as Strategic Exploration. This framework is intended to be used as a way to update, create, and redesign instruction sessions, assignments, courses and even curricula.
This framework gets at the idea that we have been discussing recently, our field is constantly evolving and changing, and we have a responsibility to continuously update our knowledge and practices as new and old users have new needs and desires for the information they access. It is an effort to actively resist being static and fixed, instead we are constantly open to new ideas to develop best practices. This framework offers one way to achieve exactly that.
