What are the Non-Mainstream Jobs?

This week, I had the pleasure of speaking, with colleagues Derek Bates, Claire Lysnes, and Tylene Reaume, to students in the Master of Library and Information Science program at the University of Western Ontario.  Erin McDonald, pioneer in establishing the SLA student group there, had taken the initiative to invite her fellow students to discover what "special librarians" actually do - and our first indicator of curiosity was the fact that the room was packed.  The questions raised by the students soon confirmed that the job opportunities available outside mainstream libraries are the subject of great interest. 

 

My colleagues described their career paths and the typical functions they carry out in supporting knowledge workers in the corporate enterprises they serve - ranging from planning large, long term knowledge management projects to producing answers to research questions "needed yesterday" - and characterized the skills and aptitudes required in fast paced settings, encouraging the students by stressing how rewarding they had found their work.  I suggested the students think about their "cultural fit" to determine the type of environment where they might feel most comfortable, contrasting (say) the nature of a job supporting intranets in a large corporation with a sales function in an startup software company, and pointed out the universal benefit of building social capital and professional visibility starting now. 

 

How does one get a non-mainstream job?  Organizations already featuring an information or knowledge management centre  or already aware they need staff with MLIS qualifications typically advertise on information faculties' job boards when they want to fill a position in records management, research, knowledge management, customer service, or IT.  But it stands out that some types of employers may not; as a result, job seekers are advised to look for job postings on the websites of organizations such as:

 

ú Museums and archives collecting, protecting, and making accessible various objects - think maps, photos, archeological artifacts, art and design - through such functions as digitization, indexing, and web display.

 

ú News media, publishers, and organizations in the arts and cultural sector.

 

ú Government agencies needing analysts for research, policy development, program delivery, and myriad other functions.

 

ú Companies selling content management, enterprise search, and software products and services.

 

Can one create a position for oneself in an organization without an information centre or other obvious unit?  Our consensus was that doing so would be possible through an existing connection to a manager in such an organization but would be a long shot without such a personal "in".

 

I had started my talk with the musing that "career planning" may be a contradiction in terms, given how many of us can tell the story of falling into a particular job through happenstance - but nothing stops anyone from giving luck a little push by greatly broadening the scope of the search for a job.