Professional identities provide a lens through which to understand ourselves and our professional community. Individual practitioners may find that shifts in their own professional identities lead them to redefine their profession and those moving into new types of roles or engaging in new tasks may strive to alter the direction of the profession at large. This paper’s first objective is to provide insights into how professional identity development occurs and how the emergence of a new or unusual take on the library and information science profession based on professional experiences working in non-traditional roles can be seen as both an opportunity and a threat to the library and information science profession, using the experience of library and information science graduates working in non-library roles as a lens. The second objective is to translate the experiences of library and information science graduates working in non-traditional roles into recommendations for promoting diversity in the definition of the profession.

This grounded theory project asked: “How do Library and Information Science (LIS) graduates in non-library roles experience professional identity?” This is an important question for current LIS practitioners and students because job opportunities are increasingly available in non-library work settings. There is limited research available on the professional identity experiences of LIS graduates in general and even less available on the professional experiences of LIS graduates in non-library roles. The study produced the theory of Personalizing Professionalism which found that individuals possess two identities which interact with each other throughout one’s career. The first is an internal appraisal of self which represents an individual’s assessment of who they “really” are as a professional. The second is an externally expressed identity, which represents who that individual presents him or herself to be. Interactions with others impact individuals’ internal appraisal of self and externally expressed identity and represent an area of potential conflict. This study contributes to the research literature on professional identity and identity formation and expression. For the LIS community, understanding how these professionals experience professional identity can help practitioners, educators, and professional associations to take advantage of a wide range of employment options.

This poster addresses how library andinformation science (LIS) graduates who work in non-library roles label themselves. The LIS community as the profession is undergoing a time of transition. Given the changing nature of the work that is being performed by LIS graduates both inside and outside of libraries, the timing is appropriate to explore how practitioners choose to label themselves as professionals. LIS graduates working in non-library roles where selected as the target population of this study because their work provides them with myriad possibilities for self-labelling. Participants exhibited four response patterns which are described and discussed.

Purpose Librarians are increasingly involved in projects and teams that require them to exhibit a broad range of knowledge and competencies which extend beyond traditional librarianship to include aspects of records management, information management, and knowledge management. In effect, librarians need to be information specialists, but the task of broadening one’s knowledge and competencies may be daunting, and it is helpful to explore the competencies of these various information disciplines as a guideline for competency development. The purpose of this paper is to provide some insights into the shared competencies and knowledge of these disciplines. Design/methodology/approach This paper describes an analysis of the competency profiles of librarians, records managers, information managers, archivists, and knowledge managers and provides a competency profile for information specialists that incorporates the knowledge and competencies from all of these areas. The sources used for this analysis were existing competency profiles developed by professional associations and employers of information workers such as government agencies. Findings The analysis resulted in the development of a competencies list which includes five competencies groups. These competency groups are: collaboration, client service, and communication; organizational understanding and strategic alignment; programme and service delivery and management; records, information, and knowledge management technical competencies; and personal qualities. Practical implications This analysis may be useful for librarians or library students who are determining which professional development opportunities to undertake as well as for managers who are seeking to define job profiles for their library staff in today’s complex information environment. Originality/value This paper bridges the disciplines of librarianship, information management, records management, archives, and knowledge management by comparing their relative competency profiles in order to create a set of competencies that are common to all disciplines.

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