What is Library Science? Careers and Degrees

I decided to build a career in library science because it gave me an opportunity to work with and help people, while also working with technology and learning about new subjects every day. I work at an academic library, so in my case, most of the people I work with are college students and faculty.

But many librarians work in public libraries with children, older adults and retirees, young parents — basically anyone who lives in their city or county and goes to the library. Other librarians work at special libraries, such as at corporate headquarters doing research to support their companies, or in law or medical offices managing information resources to support lawyers and medical professionals.

I'd been going to libraries since I was a small child, but it took me until I tried a few different things first to realize that making my career in a library would be a good fit, and that is not unusual. Lots of librarians are making a transition from a different career or majored in a different area entirely when they were in college.

To be a professional librarian, you need a master's degree in library science. There are a few undergraduate programs in related fields, like information science, but the important credential is the master's degree.

The coursework covers traditional library subjects like referencing (helping people at an information or research desk) and cataloging, but you can also take additional courses like archival studies and rare books, children's librarianship, database design, web design, user experience, and scholarly communication.

Most programs also have a strong internship, work-study, or practicum element. The best way to learn how to be a librarian is to work in a library, so library schools try to make sure that their graduates have some practical work experience before they graduate.

My first position after I completed my degree was a two-year fellowship program at a nearby university where I got to work with several different departments on a variety of different projects. I was fortunate in that I had that position lined up before I graduated, so I knew that as long as I finished the program successfully, I was set up for a good position immediately.

Knowing that I had to finish the program in order to secure the position also motivated me to do as well as I could in my final semester. It also helped that I had done an internship at that large university as part of my graduate coursework, so the people who were hiring for the fellowship program knew me already and knew that I could be successful in the fellowship program.

Having that practical, on-the-job experience before I graduated really helped with the job search.

I decided to work at a university because I really enjoyed working with college students but did not want the pressure to publish and do research that goes along with being a faculty member. I love getting to work on different subjects every day and helping students learn to do research and find and work with information.

Lots of librarians go into academic libraries at colleges and universities, but many more work in public libraries of all sizes, from tiny one-room libraries in small towns to huge metropolitan research libraries in our largest cities. The work of these libraries and librarians is vital in their communities and can be some of the most rewarding library work anywhere.

The best part of my job is when I'm working with a student and I'm able to show them something that saves them a lot of time in doing research, or I'm able to introduce them to an information source that they didn't know about.

It's also really rewarding when I can help a professor design an assignment that helps students learn something about how information works and how they can not just use information but also create new information themselves.

The most challenging aspect of my job is never having enough money in our budget to purchase all the books, journals, and electronic resources that our users need. This is true of any library, really. Nobody has infinite money in their budget to buy every possible resource that's out there.

But especially in academic libraries, the prices of scholarly journals are rising much faster than inflation, and our budgets are often flat, so in practical terms that means that we often have to cut resources. It challenges us to use our budgets creatively and strategically and to negotiate from a position of strength with publishers and vendors.

The first piece of advice I have is to work in a library! Get some practical experience working in a library, even as a volunteer in your local public library, before you commit to going to graduate school and getting a master's degree.

Make sure that you like the work (it isn't all reading books all day — in fact, many of us do very little with books) and the work environment before you make the leap.

My second piece of advice once you're enrolled in a library science program is to work in a library! Make sure that you get an internship or a practicum or a work-study job in a library so that you have some experience to put on your resume when you go out looking for a job.

If you can arrange it so that you have a tangible project that you organized and had ownership of that you can talk about in interviews, even better. Employers want to see evidence of what you can do.

I really want to encourage people from all backgrounds to consider librarianship as a career. As a field, we need to reflect the communities we serve, and librarians from historically underrepresented communities bring experience and values to the profession that our patrons really need.

Our field is stronger when the perspectives that librarians bring to it are more diverse. Whether we're working with university professors; young children getting ready to read; professionals in law, medicine, or business; or older adults, we need people with all kinds of experiences to do this work and to share their unique perspectives with the communities that we serve.