Wednesday 19 January 2011

What's your name?

As part of preparations for my Ignite talk next month, I wanted to check out some of the diversity of job titles that librarians and information professionals have. (I'm going to point out that 'librarians' are more widespread than you might think based on the number of people who work as 'librarians'.)

I asked Twitter 'Are you an info pro whose job title doesn't include 'librarian'? Could you tell me what you are known as?', and Twitter responded, by golly! There was a lot of 'information', and good showing from 'knowledge', 'learning' and 'research'.  My personal favourite is 'Transformation Officer' ('I'm a member of the strategic Libraries Management Team and my job is to improve the service. Lots of projects and funding bids.'). Thank you, tweeting info pros!

If you have or have had a non-librarian job title that you'd like to share, then please leave a comment.

ETA: I've made a couple of Wordle clouds of the job-titles, too
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What people said

Asssistant Information Adviser
Authority Control & Cataloguing Specialist
Cataloguer & Administrator for the Centre for Heritage Imaging & Collection Care
Community and Information Officer
Consultant Trainer
Content Development Officer
Cyberskills & Learning Services Officer
Development Officer
Director of Library Services
E-Services/Offsite Services Co-ordinator (but I'm an archivist rather than a librarian anyway...)
Head of Information Literacy
Head of Knowledge and Information Management
Head of Science Information Services
Hybrid Collections Coordinator
Information & Library Services Manager
Information Advisor (x3)
Information and Promotion Officer
Information Consultant
Information Executive
Information Manager
Information Ninjas (unofficial!)
Information Officer (x3)
Information Resources Development Co-ordinator
Information Scientist
Information Services Adviser
Information Specialist
Knowledge Management Systems Manager
Knowledge Engineers
Knowledge Manager
Knowledge Strategist
Learning Resource Centre Manager (x3)
Library and Information Assistant
Library and Information Services Administrator
Library Information Services Manager
Library Officer: Young People and Adults
Music Information Officer
National Information Services Manager
Neighbourhood Learning Centre Assist
Online Services Coordinator
Principal Project Leader/Weldasearch manager
Project Manager of ebooksatcambridge
Research Advisor
Research Specialist
Senior Information Advisor
Senior Information Officer (x3)
Senior Library Systems Officer
Senior Officer ICT & Learning
Senior Officer Library Services
Transformation Officer
Virtual Support & eServices Developer

22 comments:

  1. Very curious about the Transformation Officer, Librarian in disguise, but the link gives a page not found.

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  2. Niamh - thanks for the heads up. All the links that didn't work are links to Twitter statues, but it seems that you can't see them if you're not logged in to Twitter. I hadn't twigged that that was the case, so I'm just about to change it.

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  3. I've never had "librarian" in my job title - current one is "Digital Resource Manager"

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  4. Curator
    Content Expert

    (from the BL)

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  5. It might be interesting to put these job titles in to Wordle or similar and see what kind of tag cloud is generated?

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  6. like to be the information ninja!!

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  7. Venessa Harris (@Scarlettlibrarian) is Metadata Administrator at the University of Plymouth. She wrote a good article for me (CILIP Gazette) about her unusual job title, marketing her role and job titles, etc, (search archives via CILIP website for article).
    Debby Raven (@LibraryInfoNews)

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  8. I've never had librarian in my title either. I've been Customer Services Assistant, Project Assistant, Digitisation Coordinator, and now LIFE-SHARE Project Officer.

    Andy Burkhardt has my favourite job title ever - http://andyburkhardt.com/about/ - but it does contain 'Librarian' so it fails as a comment to post on this blog. :)

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  9. Do you mean Emerging Technologies Librarian, Ned? There are quite a few of those, enough that they had a special panel or meeting or get-together or something for all the Emerging Technologies Librarians at ALA annual last year.

    http://connect.ala.org/node/104303

    Not as yet aware of any in this country though think it's a brilliant idea.

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  10. I'm an Information Librarian, which is an amusing tautology.

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  11. Thanks for the extra title, Rachel, Matt, Ned, and Katie. Katie - that tautology is mind-bending. I'm trying (and failing) to think what a non-information librarian would be or do...

    @Nicola - a wordle with all the titles in has an enormous 'Information' and a lot of illegible other words! I'll play around with it more later though, and add something.

    For those, like me, that struggle to find things in the Gazette archive, Venessa Harris' (@scarlettlibgirl) article was in the 3 June 2010 Gazette, p. 9. This should be a direct link, or you can navigate to the right issue from here.

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  12. I'm the Senior Learning and Information Assistant and my boss is the Library Resources Manager (though that job title changes practically weekly!)

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  13. My title is Library and Records Manager as I deal with both (2 jobs for the price of 1!). I should become an expert juggler unless one or t'other get whisked away from me!

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  14. I'm Senior Officer of Newspapers and Periodicals (Digitisation Project) a bit long really...

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  15. I am a Trials Search Co-ordinator / Information Manager, which is a bit long too!

    Haven't been a "librarian" since I was a graduate trainee librarian many moons ago, since then I've been a Bibliographical Assistant and an Information Officer!

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  16. Thank you, anne.lit, Anonymous I and II, and agm for the extra job titles.

    Anonymous II, at least 'Senior Officer of Newspapers and Periodicals (Digitisation Project)' is quite descriptive - I think I have some idea what you might do from that title. If you're going to have all those words, it's as well if they're employed usefully!

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  17. One that I just saw today: Know How Assistant!

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  18. Thanks Annie - 'Know How Assistant'? Golly! That could get *all sorts* of enquiries...

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  19. How about 'Audience Development Officer'....people are about to become them in the South.

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  20. Just saw a job advertised for an "intelligence hub officer". Am I the only one cringing at that?

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  21. @Niamh Either that's a rather naff and unsatisfactory new coinage meaning 'library' or it's something to do with MI5, which I guess would be OK.

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