CILIP and the Archives & Records Association (ARA) have jointly convened a workforce data consortium to fund a workforce mapping survey of the library, archives, records, information and knowledge sector. This survey builds on the previous workforce mapping published in 2015 by CILIP and ARA.

In addition to CILIP and ARA, the consortium consists of Scottish Library and Information Council (SLIC), Libraries Connected, Health Education England (HEE), Information & Records Management Society (IRMS), The National Archives (TNA), and the Culture and Sport Division of the Welsh Government (MALD).

This sector which includes libraries, archives, records management, information management, data protection and knowledge management disciplines is experiencing a period of great change and disruption. All organisations within the consortium have ambitions to support this professional workforce, and in order to do so, we need access to accurate workforce data.

With the changes happening across the profession, we also believe that workforce data is less valuable if it is situated solely within one sector. Many initiatives, such as the ambition to diversify the workforce, the introduction of apprenticeships or the process of ‘digital upskilling’ depend on cross-industry data.

This workforce mapping project brings together the consortium of sector organisations, employers and other partners to co-fund the establishment and ongoing maintenance of a UK-wide workforce dataset, commencing in 2022 that we will seek to replicate and refresh every 4 years. The desired output alongside the raw datasets will be a final report, released at the end of 2022, focused on the business use of the data provided by the workforce survey, for use by the members of the consortium and to the benefit of the sector at large

Please complete the Workforce mapping survey by Friday 30th September if you are working in the library, archive, records management, information management and knowledge management domains. Or share the link with someone working in the sector!