Working in a library doesn’t necessarily mean working in a public library (although it could), librarians can also be found in academic institutions, schools, law firms, the NHS, prisons and any number of other places! Don’t be
fooled into thinking that librarianship is simply cataloguing and organising books, a librarian is there to help people access information, which could mean anything from running digital skills training workshops to helping
students compile bibliographies for their research and teaching information literacy.
Information managers can crop up anywhere. Information management involves handling information from the point at which it is collected (or created) by a company, through the storing, retrieval and use of the information (including
managing who has the right to access it) right up to archiving or deleting it. Information management encompasses a wide skill set and can cross over with IT, records management and information security (as well as the other disciplines
listed here).
Knowledge management is the process of capturing, sharing and effectively utilizing the knowledge of an organisation and knowledge managers are the people responsible for ensuring that this happens. A knowledge manager’s job could
focus on new knowledge creation or development or on the retention and storage of existing knowledge. Typically, knowledge managers need good IT and technical skills as they’re often responsible for an organisation’s intranet,
SharePoint or other social sharing tools such as Yammer or Slack. They’ll also need excellent communication and interpersonal skills to encourage knowledge sharing and facilitate internal training.
It might seem like data science roles are all for IT specialists, but roles in these areas are actually great for those with an information or knowledge management background. Broadly speaking, all of these roles are about turning
machine or computer generated data into useful and useable information, which means that understanding how to organise and categorise information and frame a question to get the results you need are invaluable skills for this sector.
Print Page
