This blog is intended to capture real-life examples of librarians who have found positions in alternative career paths. It will also be used to recommend job openings found on the web, that are applicable non-traditional library roles. Specifically, I am curating positions that utilize our unique combination of skills in information management, customer service, research/reference/information retrieval, and analysis.

Regards,

Lib, Alt

This is a terrible time for ANY graduate of ANY program to be job-hunting; my point was that even given that, I felt the diversity of ways to apply the MLIS made it a more useful degree in terms of the range of potential job applicability than a more narrowly-focused master’s. That said, we’re all going to be in the business of marketing/selling/translating our skills to a potential employer who has no clue what we can do. Unfortunately, these are skills we get little to no training for in grad school.

One of the things that might prove useful, Tomasz, is to join SLA if only to see the range of job titles their members hold – some might spark an idea of a job possibility for you (and getting active in your local chapter might help you identify potential job openings). Also, you might want to join the LinkedIn LIS Career Options Group, which is free, to both get a sense of what types of “alternative” jobs some members hold as well as to see how others are dealing with employment challenges. You can see a list of the discussions for the group by clicking on the “LinkedIn Discussions List – LIS Career Options” link listed under “Categories” on the right-hand side of this page.