In a fast-paced and changing world, it can be difficult to chart a course to success as an information professional. Thankfully, CILIP is here to help. In this article, we explore how being a member of your professional body gives you the career-long support you need to succeed.

Qualifications, training, advice from colleagues, social media, blogs, networks, specialist organisations, email lists, meet-ups – sometimes it can be overwhelming to know where to start when it comes to building your career as an information professional.

Our role at CILIP is to give you simple, affordable access to the support, encouragement and opportunities that you need to succeed in your chosen career. Whether you intend to build a career in just one sector or want to see how far your skills might take you across many sectors, our networks, training and professional recognition have all been developed by your professional peers to give you the right tools at the right time to keep your career ­on-track and heading in the right direction. Not only have we been doing this with and for librarians, information and knowledge professionals for more than 120 years, we are the only organisation in the world operating under Royal Charter to support, develop and accredit information professionals in all sectors.

Sector leadership in changing times

Our profession is changing in lots of ways that can be both exciting and challenging when you’re starting out in your professional career. We recently published new research into the ways that AI, machine learning, automation and robotics are transforming our profession.

On the one hand, the UK is undoubtedly entering a ‘4th Industrial Revolution’ powered by knowledge, data and information. We believe that our profession holds the key to helping the UK economy be more agile, innovative and productive. Our members can help people and organisations to unlock the value of their ‘information assets’ and empower them to imagine the products and services of the future.

On the other hand, the arrival of new technologies and formats are transforming ‘traditional’ library roles. The information professional of the future will work with a wide range of formats across many platforms. You are likely to be embedded within multi-disciplinary teams, adding value to others through your unique skills and expertise. You have a vital role to play in ensuring that new technologies empower information users, instead of creating new forms digital inequity.

As a fast-moving and responsive professional community, CILIP can help you to chart a course through this changing landscape, developing the right portfolio of skills, evidence and experience to demonstrate your value to current and future employers while retaining a sense of ‘who you are’ as a professional.

Many sectors, one profession

Information professionals are increasingly an ‘embedded’ workforce, in much the same way as finance or IT specialists. Our members work across every industry sector, from local government to schools, colleges and universities, from private enterprise to specialist historical collections.

What unites our professional community is the skills and values we bring to our work – captured in a sector skills standard called the ‘Professional Knowledge and Skills Base’, which CILIP maintains on behalf of the profession.

As an ‘umbrella’ professional association representing members in more than 20 industry sectors, CILIP can offer our members unparalleled access to insight and opportunities across the whole profession. Interested in making a career move into a new sector? Want to develop your skills, for example in digital or data? Got a question to put to the community? We can help!

Be part of our CILIP Community

When you become a member of CILIP, you join the information profession’s biggest and most active professional community of practice.

Members in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland benefit from representation and support uniquely tailored to their national context. Through our partnership with CILIP in Scotland and our National Committees, CILIP Cymru Wales and CILIP Ireland, we can ensure that you are able to access a professional network, advice, training and support that is relevant to your circumstances.

In England, our Regional Member Networks ensure that wherever you work you’re never far from an inclusive, welcoming community of professional practitioners that understand your local and regional context.

Across the UK, CILIP supports more than 20 Special Interest Groups (SIG’s) representing different industry sectors, areas of professional practice or subject disciplines. These SIG’s are the ‘powerhouse’ of our community, ensuring that whatever your question, we can connect you to an experience professional who is willing to help.

Even outside the UK, CILIP has an incredibly active community of 900+ members working overseas. We aim to represent and support our international members through our engagement with IFLA and bi-lateral partnerships with library organisations in their country or region.

Maintaining professional standards

CILIP is proud to be the only Chartered Institute representing information professionals in all sectors since 1898.

Our Charter gives us a mandate to maintain professional standards, scrutinise and improve information-related legislation and to recognise information professionals via our public Register of Practitioners.

It’s a role we take very seriously. Our work as a professional standards body is overseen by a Sector Development Committee (SDC), which reports directly to the CILIP Board. Recently, under the leadership of the SDC, we have introduced a new Apprenticeship Pathway and accompanying standard for sector employers, helping us to do more than ever to open the profession to new and diverse talent.

Advance your career with Professional Registration

CILIP is the leading provider of professional recognition and certification through our ‘Professional Registration’ scheme. We offer three levels of professional registration – Certification, Chartership and Fellowship – tailored to your needs and career stage. The process involves an evidence-based portfolio that you can submit online and you do not need to hold a LIS qualification (or any qualification) to apply.

Find out how becoming a Registered Professional can help you in your career.

We have also taken the additional step of validating our professional services with the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA), ensuring parity with other credit-bearing recognition schemes.

Professional Registration with CILIP is an excellent way to evidence your professionalism, your ethics and your commitment to maintaining your skills. Time and again, our Professional Registration Scheme has been selected by employers as the ‘gold standard’ in professional certification, with a proven impact on salary and career progression.

Tackling the structural challenges in our profession

CILIP is a Charity under the terms of our Royal Charter, which means we are committed to the advancement of society and the public benefit – including addressing some of the structural and systemic challenges for our profession.

The 2015 Workforce Mapping (www.cilip.org.uk/WorkforceMapping) which CILIP led with the Archives and Records Association (ARA) found evidence of deep inequalities in our profession. In addition to a significant under-representation of people from BAME and other marginalised communities in our profession, we highlighted the lack of women in senior leadership roles (despite being a predominantly female profession) and serious gender pay disparity.

Since then, we have organised ourselves through our Changing Lives manifesto to take action to change this picture. We want to become a platform that empowers and amplifies the work of our members in driving positive and lasting change.

To this end, as a member you can join one of a growing number of ‘Diversity Networks’ representing professionals from BAME backgrounds, LGBTQ+ people in our profession and people who have lived experience of disability. You can also express your support and solidarity through our Allies Network.

Our new Membership model, introduced in 2020, has allowed us to go further still – opening up CILIP membership to a wider community than ever before and giving our members the chance to ensure that your membership subs are targeted to the causes you care about.

Training, CPD and skill

CILIP is the UK’s leading provider of quality-assured training, CPD and skills development for information professionals. With more than 50 events and training activities a year delivered both centrally and in partnership with our community, there is something to meet your needs, wherever you work and whatever your career stage.

Examples of recent events delivered by the CILIP community for our members include:

• ‘Working from home – planning for productivity’


• ‘What do you want from me – job application tips from real hiring librarians’


• Friendly-accessible ‘lightning talks’ organised by our Regional Member networks


• ‘SHIFT – the future of knowledge and information management’


• ‘Artificial intelligence and the information professions’

The independent voice of the profession

Now, more than ever, our professional community needs a strong, influential and independent voice to help ensure that our members can take their rightful place at the forefront of this information age.

CILIP is the only fully-independent, member-led organisation that can speak on behalf of the whole library, knowledge and information profession. We regularly speak out on behalf of the profession in the press and broadcast media, building a strong and evidence-based case for the value and impact of our members and your work.

CILIP leads the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Libraries, Information and Knowledge – a cross-Party platform that allows us to brief Members of Parliament and the House of Lords about the issues, challenges and opportunities confronting our profession.

We also liaise regularly with employers across different industry sectors, from Local Government to schools, manufacturing to retail, Universities to heritage organisations – helping them to understand what our members do and how they can invest in their own information capability to face the future with greater confidence.

By joining CILIP, you not only gain access to a platform to amplify your own advocacy, but also contribute to advocacy on behalf of our whole profession.

Four simple steps

We hope that this article has given you an idea of why there’s never been a better time to join your professional body. It couldn’t be easier to get involved, just follow the four simple steps:

1. Open your browser and go to CILIP's Membership webpage


2. Select the membership type that’s right for you (individual, student or re-joining member)


3. Register on our website so we can keep track of your application


4. Complete the simple online Membership Application Form and don’t forget to tell us which discounts and concessions apply to you!

Start your professional journey with us today!