A few weeks ago, in the last precious days of quiet before the students returned to campus, I got an unexpected visitor: a college student who is interested in (possibly) becoming a law librarian. She wanted to talk to someone about their experiences, career path, and recommendations. It was fun chatting with her and learning more about her motivations and interests. (She wants to work with folks who are representing themselves in court or otherwise doing legal research on their own – admirable.) Based on our conversation, here is the advice I offer for someone wanting to become a law (or any other type of) librarian in 2025:
- Get some hands-on library experience before enrolling in library school so you have some idea if you like working in libraries. You can probably volunteer at your local public library. If you’re in college, work in your undergraduate library. Even if it’s repetitive work like shelving or filing, you’ll have access to the staff and can ask them what their jobs are like. One analogy my boss’ boss likes to make is that libraries are like restaurants – there’s a lot going on behind the scenes that you don’t see at the public service point or via the website. So get in there and talk to the folks on prep shift, the sous chef, dishwasher, buyer, and see how everything works.
- Additionally, or, worst case if you have no entry point to get library experience, talk to librarians of different types, who work in different sorts of libraries. Not only is being a children’s librarian a very different job to being a cataloger, being a cataloger at a public library is very different from being a cataloger at an academic or government library. For law librarians, there are three primary environments: government, typically working for a court or legislature; academic, working at a law school library; and law firms, providing information services for attorneys.
- Develop technology skills. This is necessary for most jobs these days, but ever more important for library staff, especially if you want to work in a forward-thinking, prestigious, or competitive institution. Learning some computer programming and/or systems maintenance skills will be helpful whether you want to ultimately work in systems, metadata, digitization, public service (marketing), library instruction, records management, data science, or other specialties. Reference librarians often build websites to convey information about specialized collections and have to know how to navigate specialized, complicated information sources. Archivists must understand the relationship between physical objects, descriptions of those objects, digital counterparts, and how to manage all of this information.
- Incorporate your other experience and interests, especially if librarianship is a second career. Even if you’re burned out in your current job, having a background in another subject will give you a practical and competitive advantage for many specialized (and often higher-paying) library careers. In addition to law librarians, there are medical librarians; computer science librarians; business librarians; art, film, and music librarians; language and cultural studies librarians; science and mathematics librarians; political and social science librarians, just to name a few of the more common specialties. Large companies also often employ librarians for “knowledge management” or “business management” roles – maintaining databases of products for sale, documentation, marketing assets, and the like. Some librarians manage large budgets, negotiate contracts, develop policies, do a lot of teaching and public speaking, or work as part of a sales/product support team. Whatever prior experience you have, it can probably be applied in a library setting.
- Remember that you don’t have to be “stuck” in your job. As I told my visitor, if you decide to go into librarianship and pick the “wrong” job at first, it’s ok! Librarianship is transferable and fluid. It might take a change of location, but if you don’t like your role, or your employer, or if there’s no room for growth in the ways you want to grow, you can typically find another position that will be a better fit. Perhaps you’ll have to take something less-than-ideal out of library school, but working there for a year or two will give you valuable experience that will help you when applying to your preferred job.
To my fellow librarians out there – what advice would you offer to anyone considering librarianship?