Who does what, where?  

Refreshingly, a career in Libraries, Information Services and Archives has no limits. Each is an occupational area in their own right, but by the same token, they reach far and wide into many different sectors.

To make life easier for budding new entrants, we’ve sorted the job ‘types’ into four key areas – Libraries, Information Services, Archiving and Records Management. Whilst we know the fit is not perfect (many jobs in this field sit in more than one pigeonhole, some even overlap), we hope it makes it easier to grasp ‘who does what, where’.   

Library teams 

Library staff can be found in all sorts of fantastic settings, public libraries the most obvious. But in fact, only 40% of librarians actually work in the public library domain.  

From junior assistant positions, right up to professionally qualified and acknowledged librarians, you could seek employment in government departments, professional associations, research establishments, charitable trusts and organisations. Then there are all those schools, academic and special libraries, plus commercial organisations like manufacturers and banks that are crying out for people with the right skills to uphold their information resources.

Archiving teams

In its strictest sense, archiving is a standalone occupation that involves assembling, cataloguing, preserving and managing historical information. In some ways it’s a compact, niche area, in others, a vast horizon with plenty of scope to explore.

The majority of archiving jobs are inside local authorities and heritage services, or specialist and national repositories, such as The National Archives (obviously!), the Public Records Office and the British Library. Compact teams may also be found in museums, hospitals, ecclesiastical establishments (like churches, cathedrals and other spiritual places), charities, businesses and private schools and universities.  

Information Services teams  

Information overload is the biggest dilemma in modern day living. Information officers and managers and content editors, put simply, cut through the clutter and simplify. These are the people responsible for sourcing, supplying and distributing the information that people want, when they want it. Think accessibility. With so much paper still waiting to enter the digital era, growth in this area looks set to accelerate for years to come. This opens up some staggering job opportunities for the right sort of candidates who want a piece of the action. You might be employed by a wide variety of private and public sector organisations, including public libraries, government departments, professional associations, research establishments, charities, the British Library, academic and school libraries and commercial companies.