Pursuing a career in library and information science can lead to many different job paths. You could work in a special library directly with a small group of highly specialized researchers and do everything from organizing materials, negotiating contacts, creating promotional materials, and archiving scientists’ works. You could work for the NASA Center for AeroSpace Information (CASI) as part of their Information Ingest and Achieves Team.
You could work in knowledge management and competitive intelligence using your skills and scientific knowledge to predict market trends and scope out the competition to position your company for success. Those drawn to academia can pursue several career paths, research assistant, tenure track library professor, professor of practice, continuous appoint, and contract faculty and non-faculty library positions. Tenure track positions require publication, service to the university and the profession as well as assigned job duties. Non-tenure track positions may or may not require service and publication depending on the department and the institution.
Librarians may pursue careers at international libraries abroad, or switch back and forth between public, private, academic, corporate, and special libraries. Librarianship is a career for those who love to learn and try new things.
Library Day in the Life Project A semi-annual project where librarian's from almost every walk of librarian-ship share a day or week in their life so that others can see what we really do.
Digitization of Science: The Vital Role of Archieving (PDF) Victoria Stodden, Department of Statistics, Columbia University
