The Professional Roles We Play

The following was posted in LIS Career Options Group on LinkedIn, a subgroup of the American Library Association:


What professional roles do you play as a librarian/information professional? How have they changed during your career? And perhaps most important, how do you see them changing and evolving in the future?

These issues are discussed in an intriguing recent article in New Library World, "A systematic literature review informing library and information professionals' emerging roles." Evgenia Vassilakaki and Valentini Moniarou-Papaconstantinou, of the Library Science & Information Systems Department of TEI of Athens, Greece, uncovered their findings from peer-reviewed literature published between 2000 and 2014.

The emerging roles:

In "Emerging roles and possible futures for librarians and information professionals", Bruce Rosenstein highlights the six emerging roles that were discovered in the research. These were:

• Librarian as Teacher
• Technology Specialist
• Embedded Librarian
• Information Consultant
• Knowledge Manager
• Subject Librarian

Rosenstein concludes his discussion with the following thought;

You can put this article into action by comparing your current role with the six above. If any look promising, commit to learning more and reaching out to your professional networks. These opportunities may require additional training, taking new courses or perhaps a new degree. However, a major takeaway from the article is that in today's knowledge-focused world, it is preferable to be aligned with the future rather than the past.

Topic submitted by: 
ALLA(WA) President  - Mawghan Elverd. 
Acting Knowledge Manager, Jackson McDonald.