Future Skills for the LIS Profession

By Simon Burton

When recruiters at U.K.-based CB Resourcing (cbresourcing.com) noticed a shift in some of the skills our clients asked for, we decided to do some research to learn about the skills gap, understand what’s really going on, and identify what professionals and managers need to do to be ready for the next 5 years. The research project looked at our two core markets: the legal sector and academic librarianship. For the former, we partnered with BIALL (British and Irish Association of Law Librarians; biall.org.uk) and for the latter, we partnered with CILIP (The Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals; cilip.org.uk).

Both sectors identified a number of key themes driven not only by changes in technology but also by the need to maintain the people skills necessary within LIS teams to deliver value to service users. The results of the surveys provide varying perspectives and insights into the future skills requirements of LIS professionals as well as raising some very provocative questions as to how, as a profession, we may acquire the skills needed for the future.

LIS Skills in Academia

To discover skills gaps in academic libraries, we took a slightly different approach. We worked with CILIP to develop an e-survey, which we sent out to heads, directors, and managers of libraries at every higher-education (HE) institute in the U.K. and Ireland. We also promoted the survey via Society of College, National and University Libraries (SCONUL) and CILIP. We had six specific aims in mind: 

• Understand the current skills requirements and gaps in HE sector library teams.
• Gain an understanding of how leaders develop their own skills. Get a picture of the need for professional accreditation and professional registration.
• Get a picture of how the current environment library teams operate in covering both the physical space, services provided, and technology used.
• Look at future changes and anticipated challenges
• Understand where the skills gaps may lie in the future.

With this information, we hoped to provide a current snapshot of the sector and what the leaders working within it saw as key developments and disruptive events that would shape the future, specifically during the next 5 years. [Readmore]