Postgraduate Courses in Librarianship and Information Services (LIS)

Librarianship is an old, well established subject which many people associate with taking out books with the librarian as an administrator of the system. But in the present day and associated with the transition to digital documents and also on the provision of information access and answers to questions, this becomes a fascinating and open-ended subject. As more and more information appears on the web, in e-journals and on databases, users need an information gatekeeper. This would be someone to keep track of good quality sources, who can search them effectively, summarise and report on a topic, create and maintain a web page or a database, add indexing terms to documents and know about the management and preservation of documents and collections whether analogue or digital. Studying a postgraduate course in librarianship and information services (LIS) will equip you with this knowledge.

Courses in LIS are mainly postgraduate as a subject background is often useful and gives the professional a better understanding of the viewpoint and needs of their clients. A first degree in any subject is acceptable as information gate-keeping can be useful in any walk of life nowadays. You would expect to start as a librarian or information officer in any library: public or academic or in a workplace such as a law firm or a charity or in Parliament or the R+D department of a manufacturing company, the policy making division of a bank or in an enquiry service such as a Citizen’s Advice Bureau. You could also work as a researcher based, not in a library, but with a computer terminal and access to facts rather than documents in a range of professions. For instance you could be a programme researcher with the BBC.

Once in, you can be mobile and either change subjects areas or else seek promotion and greater expertise in one subject area. Pay depends very much on the subject area you are working in. Law and business tend to pay very well, but the work carries considerable responsibility for accuracy and you may be providing factual answers. In academia you are dealing more with the resources and the users find their own answers, so both the pay and the work contents will vary considerably. In medicine, your answers can impact directly on health, and sometimes on life and death.

Some students come to the field straight from their first degree. In this case most postgraduate courses in librarianship and information services require at least a year’s work experience, though, for example, at City University, we do use our discretion a bit. But some pre-course work is expected as part of our CILIP recognition. CILIP is the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, created by a merger of the old Library Association with the specialist Institute of Information Scientists to provide one professional body. Other students come after they have already had one career as a change or an extension of previous activity. Full time and part time taught masters courses are available and on the academic side,

M Phils and PhDs are awarded for appropriate research.

For example, at City Univeristy, we offer as our main qualifications, MSc in information science or MSc/MA in library and information studies. The difference between the two is an emphasis on seeking out information or on collection management respectively. We are strongly IT oriented with an electronic learning environment and many electronic publications available. This allows for flexible learning where parts of the course can be taken at a distance although the course as a whole is not offered at a distance. The full time course lasts a full 12 months and the part time runs for 27 months or 24 with fast track for the dissertation.

Apart from the two main courses, we also offer a medical and pharmaceutical information variant called Hapi and a venture together with Arts Management called Information Management in the Cultural Sector which combines information skills with the broad policy context in which performing arts organisations or museums operate.

Our IS Scheme is part of the School of Informatics and runs alongside other courses devoted more to operating the technology and setting up the systems.

Our website is http://www.soi.city.ac.uk/ and follow the links. Specifically for the courses, our site is http://www.soi.city.ac.uk/organisation/is/teaching/index.html . The School runs Open Days about four times a year for potential students to look at what is available.

Other similar courses are offered at Loughborough, Sheffield, University College London and Aberystwyth to name just a few of the better known ones.

Once you have graduated from a postgraduate course in librarianship and information services, there are a wide range of information and library related jobs available as suggested at the start. One can move between subject areas fairly freely as it’s the information skill one brings. Only in a few specialised fields is some detailed subject knowledge required – such as the pharmaceutical industry or law, and even there it depends on exactly what job one proposes to do. There is room for all sorts of degrees of knowledge even there. So prospects are pretty bright. Don't delay, start preparing now for your application for a postgraduate course in LIS.

Contributed by: Dr Tamara Eisenschitz, Admissions Tutor, Information Science Scheme, Dept Information Science, City University, London