Destination Data for Graduates of Postgraduate Library Programmes in the Republic of Ireland

Since embarking on the MSc in Information and Library Management at Dublin Business School, I have met numerous lecturers, guest speakers and other L.I.S. professionals at different events, all of whom work in a diverse range of industries and positions within their respective organisations. This experience has contributed towards the direction I will be taking for my dissertation, as I intend to explore the scope of employment for L.I.S. Masters course graduates in Ireland.

The aim of my dissertation is to examine the sectors of employment that graduates have entered since completing their courses, including the organisations they have worked for and the roles that they have filled within those organisations. I hope to be able to generate comparable figures for the numbers of graduates who have pursued careers inside and outside of the library sector. I also wish to assess the degree to which the education received in L.I.S. Masters courses is transferable to employment outside of the library environment. The target population for this dissertation is those who have graduated from an L.I.S. Masters course in the Republic of Ireland since the academic year 2011/12 inclusive.

A significant amount of literature exists regarding the wide range of skillsets utilised in day-to-day work by modern librarians (Foutch, 2016), (Murray, 2014), (Mahraj, 2012), (Gordon, 2003). Considerable literature is also available regarding the transferability and applicability of librarians’ skillsets to jobs outside of the library environment (Spring, 2016), (Law, 2014). However, there does not seem to be sufficient research focused on recent graduates in Ireland, which specifically examines the areas of employment graduates enter after completing their L.I.S. course.

There is also previous research concerning the skills that L.I.S. professionals feel they lack when seeking employment outside of traditional L.I.S. environments. However, this research is based upon data gathered from professionals spread across the globe (Hazeri, Sarrafzadeh, & Martin, 2007) I hope to gather data that is specifically representative of graduates of Irish courses to compare with this existing research, as well as other studies in the literature.

Based on the literature reviewed, and my own experiences, I believe that there is an opportunity to conduct informative research examining the variety of graduates’ career paths, both inside and outside of the library environment within the Irish context.

If you are a graduate of an L.I.S. Masters course in the Republic of Ireland, who has graduated since the academic year 2011/12 inclusive, and would like to participate in this survey, please click the following link to complete the short questionnaire –https://s.surveyplanet.com/rypPzuXHb

References

1. Foutch, L. J. ., leslie.foutch@vanderbilt.ed. (2016). A New Partner in the Process: The Role of a Librarian on a Faculty Research Team. Collaborative Librarianship, 8(2), 80–83.
2. Gordon, R. S. (2003). The accidental systems librarian. Medford, NJ: Information Today, Inc.
3. Hazeri, A., Sarrafzadeh, M., & Martin, B. (2007). Reflections of Information Professionals on Knowledge Management Competencies in the LIS Curriculum. Journal of Education for Library and Information Science, (3), 168.
4. Law, D. (2014). The world is our lobster. New Library World, 115(5/6), 200–210.
5. Mahraj, K., katy.mahraj@gmail.co. (2012). Using Information Expertise to Enhance Massive Open Online Courses. Public Services Quarterly, 8(4), 359–368. https://doi.org/10.1080/15228959.2012.730415
6. Murray, T. E. . (2014). Applying Traditional Librarianship to New Roles for Special Librarians. Journal of Library Administration, 54(4), 327–336. https://doi.org/10.1080/01930826.2014.924321
7. Spring, H. (2016). Online learning: the brave new world of massive open online courses and the role of the health librarian. Health Information & Libraries Journal, (1), 84. https://doi.org/10.1111/hir.12134

About The Author

Daire O’Driscoll is currently completing his MSc in Information and library management at Dublin Business School. He previously graduated with BA in Theological and Biblical Studies from Trinity College Dublin. Daire is currently volunteering in the Barnardos Learning and Development Service. Before commencing his Masters, he worked in a variety of different jobs, including as an English language teacher and a fiction writer.