Comments on: Librarians Have Skills That Pay The Bills

By: Librarians: The First Data Scientists « Sumana Ramakrishnan

Librarians: The First Data Scientists « Sumana Ramakrishnan — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 01:04:09 +0000

[...] within an organization, and are constantly creating in-house documents and reports. In his post, “Librarians Have Skills That Pay The Bills,” blogger Andy Burkhardt explains [...]

By: Allan Chin

Allan Chin — Sat, 26 May 2012 19:56:58 +0000

Andy, I completely agree with you that we librarians have many transferable skills. Because we are in the business of information, we find it easy to learn, remember, and organize. Oftentimes we are indeed “walking encyclopedias”. For me, my strongest points are customer service and foreign languages, some of which I speak, and others I have used in cataloging. At the moment, I’m trying to learn new web developing skills.

But my question is, how do I translate this into a new job, especially in this economy? I lost my job as a librarian three years ago at a non-profit cultural research institution, and I haven’t worked full-time since. In the meantime I’ve noticed the reduction of librarian job postings generally, and of those, more seem to be wanting interns and preprofessionals. The laundry list of required education and skills also seems to be expanding without a corresponding increase in salary. And add to that all the new MLS graduates to the marketplace in the meantime.

I have absolutely no fear about doing other things – while I was already a librarian I worked at a dot.com for three years managing accounts. But I still have one heck of a time finding any kinds of appropriate jobs to apply for, and convincing potential employers that I’m not “just a librarian”…

By: Serdinç

Serdinç — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 19:06:08 +0000

Very very thanks to you Andy After i finished my thesis, i will share you and your followers. Thanks again!

By: Andy Burkhardt

Andy Burkhardt — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 18:44:49 +0000

Serdinç, I definitely remember chatting with you. I hope you're enjoying Denmark and going to school there. The best example of creativity in libraries I have heard of lately was a talk by Randy Hensley. He's discussing information literacy, but the ideas about creativity could be used in a number of different library contexts. Here's a pretty good write up of his talk. The Creative Dynamic of Information Literacy

By: Serdinç

Serdinç — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 11:52:21 +0000

Hi Andy. May be you will recognise me, i am from Turkey, we had talked before on the web. I am in Denmark now, Royal School of Information Sciende. Anyway, i am writting a thesis and my problem statement is “how can we make library more creativity for user atractive?” If you have any idea, or any examples for creativity, i will be very happy Andy. Thank you
Serdinç

By: career ideas

career ideas — Sat, 01 Jan 2011 04:49:00 +0000

yes a librarian must be creative, this year may be better for a librarian

By: On Digital’n’Data Librarianship « OUseful.Info, the blog…

On Digital’n’Data Librarianship « OUseful.Info, the blog… — Thu, 27 May 2010 13:10:31 +0000

[...] here’s another related post I came across yesterday: Librarians Have Skills That Pay The Bills. And here’s one that got me thinking about the role public librarians might have to play in [...]

By: Andy Burkhardt

Andy Burkhardt — Thu, 27 May 2010 04:03:17 +0000

Oh yeah, definitely with publishers. They know how people's minds work and librarians work on marketing these products to researchers all the time. “Use our stuff!” I've talked to a lot of former librarians who found jobs with vendors or publishers. We want products to be great.

By: Andy Burkhardt

Andy Burkhardt — Thu, 27 May 2010 01:52:58 +0000

GO US indeed! I like “diagnostic ability.” We're able to recognize what the real question actually is or grasp the actual problem. As for your second point, I was trying to say a little bit of that in “Information Architecture” but you captured it's essence much bettter than I. We can see the value in both highly controlled information as well as very personal information. No two people have the exact same conceptualization of reality so they will conceptualize information differently. Librarians realize this and are experts at working on ways to help people find information that is meaningful to THEM.

By: Emma Coonan

Emma Coonan — Thu, 27 May 2010 01:20:33 +0000

Great post!

I'd like to suggest two allied skills that seem highly specialist at first glance, but which I think are fundamental to communication and to the transmission of knowledge ...

* Diagnostic ability.

The basis of the reference interview or one-to-one help clinic. Librarians are able to draw out partially articulated - or even wholly unrecognised - information needs and desires and translate them into a form that makes them susceptible to searching, and thus possible to address or resolve.

* An understanding of the myriad forms of information conceptualisation.

We know more about the conceptual containers into which systems, machines, academic disciplines and people put chunks of information than anyone else. With people this chunking is often only partially realised, since humans construct and relate meaning in such exquisitely personal and sophisticated ways; in contrast, controlled systems and taxonomies can feel forced and illogical in their attempts to render the same world in a hierarchical and organised way (LCSH, anyone?...). We mediate between all these worldviews.

I really can only say, GO US!