The Profession’s Gone Mercenary

“Career Sustainability” by Deb Hunt from SLA’s Future Ready blog. 

This entry got me thinking about my professional existential crisis again as well as reinforced my mercenary mindset. 

Here are some of the more interesting bits of the entry… 

• Trends related to LIS employment show that in 2007, 15% of employers were not libraries and in 2008, that number jumped to 27%.  
• …emerging jobs outside of libraries shows a wide variety of titles: emerging technologies librarian, usability analyst, information architect…  (Or the one I use: Information Broker.)
• LIS skills are good currency, but only for those with the flexibility and insight to exploit the opportunities.
• Many LIS jobs are not coming back or are coming back in a whole different way.

I can’t disagree with any of these statements.  If nothing else it made me feel better that others in the special library arena are having to go the mercenary route as well.  To survive, both professionally and personally, I had to adapt my skills to modern information problems and take them to where the work is.  As an embedded librarian (even though none of my coworkers would think to call what I do by that term) in a technology area, I’m using all my librarian skills, but in a non-traditional environment and in ways which they weren’t originally intended.  For example: 

• My ability to navigate information resources for retrieval of data has expanded to also include the interpretation of that data.
• My cataloging skills are now used to help flesh out taxonomies for the company’s web site as well as help organize my department’s internal white papers.  
• My ready reference skills, while still used as such, are much less in demand, but the customer service aspects associated with those skills are still in play when I deal with my clients. 
• My collection development and information evaluation skills are still being drawn on to choose quality sources of information for the department as well as my own group’s research needs, but instead of physical items, nearly everything I’m evaluating now is digital. 
• My outreach and instruction skills have morphed from traditional one-and-done overview events into more subtle and ingrained engagements with the teams I support. It’s changed from “Hey did you know the company has a library?” to being an extension of the project teams. 

As I’ve mentioned in the past, I’ve been struggling with the idea of how my library degree sets me apart from the rest of the 70,000 analysts my company employs.  In a traditional library setting, the MLIS is kind of your club card to get in the door.  You’re not likely to be considered for the position unless you have the degree.  In my current position, tons of people could be considered for the work without having my rather specialized background.  So what makes me special now?  The degree I have exposed me to experiences and knowledge that give me an edge for the jobs I want whether they are in a tradition setting or as an embedded. 

Perhaps what it really comes back to (for me) is my antiquated and nostalgic view of what the “librarian” should be.  The age of librarians as holy guardians of knowledge is likely coming to an end, however.  So am I the last of the old or the first of the new?