Comments on: Q: What type of Information Studies job would suit me? http://www.lisjobs.com/CareerQA_blog/?p=202 Fri, 22 Jun 2012 02:26:29 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2 By: tadpolebeer http://www.lisjobs.com/CareerQA_blog/?p=202&cpage=1#comment-273 tadpolebeer Tue, 15 Dec 2009 18:55:14 +0000 http://www.lisjobs.com/CareerQA_blog/?p=202#comment-273 If you’re interested in digital librarianship, one area you might consider is distance librarianship. There are several forms that distance librarianship takes, but in my position as an academic off-campus librarian almost everything I do is online. I do provide in-person instruction at off-campus locations, but increasingly we are moving to online instruction sessions as more and more classes go completely online. My interaction with students is almost exclusively done via email, chat, and online forms. Distance librarianship requires the same set of skills and knowledge required of traditional academic librarians, and you do pretty much the same job: reference, instruction, collection development. That said, you need to be willing to adapt your skills and knowledge to fit the online environment. For instance, you may not have any in-person contact with most of your patrons, but your public service level has to be the same as if you were helping them in person, sometimes higher. You don’t need a strong technological background as much as you need to have an interest in emerging technologies. And that’s just in an academic environment. Many corporate and special librarians are online librarians serving clients worldwide. If you think distance librarianship is the type of librarianship for you, you might consider checking out ACRL’s Distance Learning Section (<a href="http://caspian.switchinc.org/~distlearn" rel="nofollow">http://caspian.switchinc.org/~distlearn</a>) and/or maybe attending the Off-Campus Library Services Conference (<a href="http://ocls.cmich.edu/conf2010/index.html" rel="nofollow">http://ocls.cmich.edu/conf2010/index.html</a>). If you’re interested in digital librarianship, one area you might consider is distance librarianship. There are several forms that distance librarianship takes, but in my position as an academic off-campus librarian almost everything I do is online. I do provide in-person instruction at off-campus locations, but increasingly we are moving to online instruction sessions as more and more classes go completely online. My interaction with students is almost exclusively done via email, chat, and online forms.

Distance librarianship requires the same set of skills and knowledge required of traditional academic librarians, and you do pretty much the same job: reference, instruction, collection development. That said, you need to be willing to adapt your skills and knowledge to fit the online environment. For instance, you may not have any in-person contact with most of your patrons, but your public service level has to be the same as if you were helping them in person, sometimes higher. You don’t need a strong technological background as much as you need to have an interest in emerging technologies.

And that’s just in an academic environment. Many corporate and special librarians are online librarians serving clients worldwide.

If you think distance librarianship is the type of librarianship for you, you might consider checking out ACRL’s Distance Learning Section (http://caspian.switchinc.org/~distlearn) and/or maybe attending the Off-Campus Library Services Conference (http://ocls.cmich.edu/conf2010/index.html).

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