The New Information Professional: Your Guide to Careers in the Digital Age

Abstract

The three authors of The New Information Professional are directors in the School of Information at the University of Michigan in the departments of admissions and student affairs (Lawson) and career development (Kroll and Kowatch). They have put together a very well-organized and well-indexed text on career planning for new information professionals. Chapters represent fields of interest, both traditional and innovative, related to information science careers, such as archives and preservation, records management, and libraries, as well as human-computer interaction, social computing, information policy, and information analysis and retrieval. A final chapter offers advice for designing one's own career as well as a tool for an action plan. All chapters, except the last, are consistently organized, making the book a useful read either as a broad overview of potential careers or as a reference book for brief information on a particular profession. Along with an introduction, skills, and professional roles, each chapter includes information on future potential, salary expectations, and professional organization resources and a brief piece on education and training. First-person narratives by professionals in each field round out the chapters, which give the reader a personalized sense of the specialty—much as interviewing a working professional might. Multiple perspectives are presented for each specialty. There is much to appreciate in the design of the book. Every chapter has a career map and a reference list. Occasional “QUICK FACT!” callouts are sprinkled throughout the book at the margins to facilitate skimming or to point out important things to remember. Chapters each have a “Key Words to Know” boxed table related to the particular specialized language of the profession covered. For visual thinkers, a flow chart serves to map each career from education and key coursework through internships, job titles, and relevant industries. These career maps are listed after the table of contents, making them easy to find. An appendix lists twenty-four iSchools and refers the reader to the American Library Association for other accredited schools of library science. Links are also provided to look up human-computer interaction programs and the Society of American Archivists programs. In fact, the design of the book will make it a useful and interesting read for the audience it is most intended to serve (the new information professional). The one unfortunate omission in this book is a chapter on the field of hospital information specialists or embedded clinical librarians. We get only the briefest mentions related to Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) issues in the records management chapter; generic, short job descriptions in a couple of places; and one profile of an integration specialist in the information analysis and retrieval chapter. While the example is appreciated, the career is definitely underreported. There are many positive, proactive initiatives that require the support of information professionals in the field of health care. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and the Institute of Medicine (IOM) promote comparative effectiveness research, and they specifically include working with an information specialist in their standards. Nurses' Magnet hospital accreditation focuses on evidence-based practice (EBP)—meaning translating the research evidence to daily clinical practice—which has evolved with the support of information specialists through searches, critical analysis, outreach and collaboration, and teaching of the EBP process. The Institute for Healthcare Improvement's “100,000 Lives” campaign has achieved and extended its goal to “Protecting 5 Million Lives” through specific, focused quality improvement that is supported by librarian searches and supports that bridge the gap from research to practice in health care. The electronic medical record (EMR) is noted in sample job descriptions and the aforementioned profile, but little related to the information aspects (MedlinePlus Connect or an info-button) is covered. Perhaps in the second edition of the book, the University of Michigan's School of Information will recognize and value our work in health care as much as they do in other arenas. Kim Dority's Rethinking Information Work and Rachel Singer Gordon's The NextGen Librarian's Survival Guide are excellent books that supported and promoted the iSchool concept early after the movement's inception. Lawson, Kroll, and Kowatch have given us an updated career guide that accepts and assumes library science's transformation to information professionals, and they have written an easy-to-use career guide reference for career counselors and new graduates. Librarians thinking of getting into a new venue may also find this book valuable. This book is recommended as a useful resource for recruitment to the information profession in all college career centers and for library and information science graduate program collections, as well as an introduction to the possibilities of the profession for individuals considering the master of library and information science degree.