5 Careers for a Master’s in Library Science Graduate

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Staff
Updated June 14, 2021

Master's in Library Science Careers

  • Researcher and Knowledge Specialist
  • Medical Archivist
  • Legal Archivist
  • Chief Information Officer
  • Museum Curator

You've known for years that a Master's in Library Science was the career route for you. Being able to work in a library system and helping others access texts and resources is your idea of a dream career. Unfortunately, the job outlook for the traditional librarian, managing literature and written documents in public and academic facilities, isn't promising. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has predicted a slower than usual growth in this field over the next eight years. But that's no reason to be dismayed. The great news is that there are a number of career opportunities open to the graduate with a Master's in Library Science. Here are five of the most exciting.

Resource: Top 30 Affordable Online Master's in Library Science Degree Programs

Researcher and Knowledge Specialist

Knowledge and information grow exponentially: no one knows that better than the graduate in Library Science. With your skills in information cataloguing, storage, and retrieval, there's no one better suited to help businesses manage both the data they generate and the information they need. As a professional researcher, you'll be engaged in analyzing the kind of information needed, gathering it from whatever sources are available, and packaging it in a professional and useful manner. You may also be called upon to present this information in a formal setting such as a conference or webinar.

Medical Archivist

Medical professionals are becoming increasingly overwhelmed with data. As governmental and insurance regulations for the proper management of this material increase, health providers must look to people trained in the skills you've acquired as a graduate with a Master's in Library Science to archive medical data, to access it when required, and to see that it's shared with authorized individuals. Hospitals, private practitioners, and clinics all require such services, as do the libraries used by medical students at major academic institutions.

Legal Archivist

Librarians can provide services that are indispensable for legal professionals. The United States has the largest and most complex law libraries in the world. These special libraries and archives maintain vast collections of legal digests, treatises, reviews, statues, reports, and a host of other resources for attorneys, law students, legislators, and researchers. The legal archivist will have acquired important skills in the process of acquiring a Master's in Library Science, skills that can be adapted to the specific needs of the collections he or she will be working with as a legal archivist.

Chief Information Officer

The chief information officer plays a vital role in business. The term "information" in the job's title stands for "information technology," and the chief information officer oversees a firm's total digital collection of standards, transactions, policies, budgetary data, employee records, and much more. In this capacity, the chief information officer must wear a variety of hats: archivist, database creator, and researcher are just a few. Because as a graduate with a Master's in Library Science you've studied the systems of information and archival technology, this career path is particularly open to you.

Museum Curator

In recent years a number of career paths have opened up in museum work for those trained in archival and cataloguing skills. Museum collections are widely diverse and varied. They are also continually growing, as individuals donate materials to museums that need to be incorporated into standing collections. The curator is responsible for keeping track of each institution's collection and new acquisitions, establishing and constantly improving ways to make the collections accessible to the public and researchers while insuring that they are properly catalogued and intelligently stored.

Graduates with a Master's in Library Science have acquired skills that are currently held in great demand by both private business and public-service organizations: cataloguing information, database and website management, and knowledge storage and retrieval are just a few. When you're equipped with a Master's in Library Science, the world is truly your oyster when it comes to building a successful career.

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