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What Information Professionals Need to Know:
Job Ads Analysis
Irene Lopatovska
School of Information, Pratt Institute, USA.
ilopatov@pratt.edu
ABSTRACT
A large number of ASIS&T members are involved in
their academic programs’ development, accreditation
and assessment of academic degrees’ offerings in re-
lation to the professional market needs. The paper pre-
sents information about secondary sources of evi-
dence regarding the library and information science
professional market and argues that job advertise-
ments offer rich data on desirable professional com-
petencies and students’ aspirations.
KEYWORDS
library and information science education, core competen-
cies, curriculum development, iSchools, ALA accreditation
INTRODUCTION
Information science programs are continuously involved in
assessing their performance and offerings against job market
demands and required professional competencies (COA,
2015). Such competencies could be gauged through the col-
lection and analysis of primary source data, such as employ-
ers’ surveys conducted by a program, or secondary sources
of evidence, or data, collected, analyzed and/or presented by
external sources. This paper reviews several types of second-
ary evidence that enables master of science library and infor-
mation science (MSLIS) programs to gauge the market needs
and desirable competencies for their students. This paper fo-
cuses on the job advertisements (ads) as a rich source of data
on professional competencies and presents an example of the
findings derived from the job ads analysis. The paper argues
that job ad data provides valuable information about students’
professional interests, complements other primary and sec-
ondary sources on professional competencies and is relevant
to LIS and non-LIS programs.
RELEVANT LITERATURE
The paper reviews four categories of sources on the state of
the information professions’ job market and competencies,
including a) scholarly literature/white papers; b) statements
from professional organizations; c) employer data collected
by professional organizations and d) reports of the job ads
analysis. Due to the paper length requirements, a small set of
illustrative examples for each category is reviewed below.
80th Annual Meeting of the Association for Information Science
& Technology, Washington, DC | Oct. 27-Nov. 1, 2017
Authors Retain Copyright
747
Hilary Baribeau
School of Information, Pratt Institute, USA.
hbaribea@pratt.edu
Scholarly Literature
The white papers produced by John Bertot and his colleagues
illustrate the value of such reports in understanding the job
market and professional competencies for MSLIS degree
holders. In a paper produced for the American Library Asso-
ciation (ALA), Bertot and Sarin (2016) analyze and report on
the unique values of the librarian profession, which include
privacy, equity, inclusion, open government, civic engage-
ment, human rights, intellectual freedom and democratic ide-
als. Among the unique competencies, the authors list the abil-
ity to understand the information needs of users, deliver in-
struction and programming and to facilitate openness and ac-
cess to technologies and digital content. In a paper commis-
sioned by the University of Maryland’s iSchool, Bertot, Sarin
and Percell (2015) outline the desirable competencies of a
school’s graduates, including the ability to be collaborative
problem-solvers, creative, socially innovative and adaptable
to changing professional needs and environments. The desir-
able hard skills mentioned by the authors include data-related
competencies, digital technology skills, ability to make in-
formed policy decisions and fundraising.
Statements from Professional Organizations
The statements of professional associations outline expecta-
tions for all graduates of LIS programs. For example, in 2015
ALA’s Committee on Accreditation (COA) released updated
standards for accreditation which, among other things, high-
light the need for increased emphasis on technology and com-
munication skills in light of a “rapidly changing field” (ALA,
2015). The emphasis on the continued development of tech-
nology skills is also mentioned in the Association of College
and Research Libraries in their 2016 report on the top trends
in academic libraries (ACRL, 2016).
Employer Data from Professional Organizations
Some professional associations routinely conduct student and
employer surveys in order to gauge professional skills and
competencies that are deemed important in the information
field. Informative examples of the data sources from profes-
sional association include ALA Student Survey and Em-
ployer Survey Overview (ALA, 2016), ALA Task Force on
the Context of Future Accreditation Online Forums Analysis
Report (ALA, 2016 Dec.); ACRL Survey to employers
(ACRL, 2016). Some of the most frequently mentioned com-
petencies in these sources include leadership and manage-
ment, technology, soft-skills and communication, research
and practical experience.

Job Ads Analysis
Analysis of the job ads is one commonly used method for as-
sessing professional competencies (Nonthcumjane, 2011;
Sproles & Ratiedge, 2004; White, 1999; Younger, 2005). A
2015 study conducted by San Juan State University examined
over 400 ads for LIS professions and noted that technology,
communication and collaborative skills were most common
across both academic and corporate positions (ACRL, 2016).
Maceli (2015) analyzed job ads in order to identify profes-
sionally required technology skills and found that web design
and development, metadata and digital collection manage-
ment were among the most frequently mentioned skills, along
with specific programming languages and databases. In a
2013 job ads survey, Harper (2013), analyzed 326 job ads and
found that management skills, instruction skills and the abil-
ity to adopt emerging technologies were most valued by em-
ployers. While the author acknowledges the limitations of job
ads as expository documents, he states the value of these sur-
veys in observing the trends on the job market.
METHODS
The data reported here were collected over a course of eight
semesters from Fall 2012 to Spring 2016 by the MSLIS stu-
dents as part of a required course assignment. The aim of the
assignment was to enhance students’ understanding of the
professional job market. The assignment required students to
search for and document information about jobs they would
apply for after graduation. In addition to addressing the
course learning objectives, the analyzed job ads data were
used in the program’s curriculum development and assess-
ment projects.
After each semester, the job ad data logged by students were
aggregated and, after duplicates’ removal, automatically
coded into five main categories: job title, hiring institution,
hard skills, soft skills and education requirements. The cod-
ing schema was informed by prior research (Han & Hswe,
2009; Younger, 2005; Nonthcumjane, 2011; Kousha &
Abdoli, 2008; Lai, 2005; Sproles & Ratiedge, 2004; and Choi
& Rasmussen, 2006). Frequencies of terms and their percent-
ages in the semesters’ totals were calculated and compared
over the course of the eight semesters surveyed.
FINDINGS
The presented findings are based on the analysis of 2450
unique job ads. The three most frequently occurring terms in
each of the five main categories were tallied for each semes-
ter. These top terms and the ranges of their frequencies in sur-
veyed semesters are presented below.
Job Title: The three most frequent terms in the job titles in-
cluded "archivist," "librarian" and "assistant." This indicates
distinct and continued interest in the traditional LIS positions.
Hiring Institutions: The coding schema included eight types
of hiring institutions, including academic, corporation, mu-
seum, public, cultural heritage, government, medical and un-
known. Job ads associated with academic institutions were
most frequently logged by students, though these frequencies
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declined sharply in the semesters between 2015 and 2016.
Corporations were the second highest hiring institution
among the job ads. Corporations included a potentially wider
range of institutions than the other categories and included
law firms, technology companies and for-profit institutions,
which could have contributed to its high frequency. Between
Spring 2015 and Spring 2016, we observed a sharp increase
in job ads from public institutions, including public libraries,
indicating students’ continuous, if not heightened, interest in
public service. Job ads from medical institutions were con-
sistently the least selected by students.
Hard Skills: The four most frequently mentioned hard skills
included the terms “digital,” “standard” and “EAD.” These
terms indicate that many of the jobs chosen by students re-
quired digital, or computer, skills, and a knowledge of pro-
fessional standards and protocols. The high frequency of the
EAD, a standard archiving protocol, correlated with the high
frequency of archivist” job titles. Programming skills and
web development, while comprising many narrower terms
within the survey, yielded the fewest results despite “digital”
being a high use term.
Soft Skills: Within the category of soft skills, the terms "com-
munication," "service" and "management" yielded the high-
est results consistently throughout the eight semesters. While
the job ads are primarily for LIS positions, these soft skills
are applicable to all professions and are indicative of a trend
towards working collaboratively with others.
Education: When searching for levels of education in the job
ads, “masters” appeared most frequently across all eight se-
mesters surveyed closely followed by the term “equivalent.”
Across all surveyed semesters, a little over 50% of master de-
gree requirements mentioned ALA- accredited program.
“Bachelors” was consistently the least frequent term.
Overall, the frequencies of terms did not fluctuate dramati-
cally throughout the years surveyed, indicating not only con-
sistent interests of the students, but also consistent job re-
quirements across various hiring institutions for hard skills,
soft skills and education. The data illustrates a strong desire
from employers for applicants with strong collaborative skills
and digital fluency.
CONCLUSION
While the study findings complement general sources on pro-
fessional competencies and reflect career interests of a par-
ticular student body, they may not objectively reflect the
needs of the profession. Future work will compare the stu-
dents' career interests, as reflected in the ads they identify, to
the full spectrum of professional ads. Any disconnect be-
tween student career aspirations and the needs of the profes-
sion would signal the need to help students plan their careers
as well as to help programs evaluate their curricula.
Our review of the sources on professional competencies indi-
cate the dominance of LIS-relevant sources, which can be ex-
pected in light of the field’s longevity and the accreditation

requirements for the MSLIS programs. In a climate of grow-
ing multidisciplinary trends and the iSchool movement, we
identified an opportunity for ASIS&T, the iCaucus (iSchools,
2014) and other not-exclusively LIS-focused organizations to
develop their own sources of evidence on the competencies
of information professionals. In the meantime, LIS and non-
LIS programs should consider the job ads data as a valuable
proxy for the state of the job market, professional demands
and students’ interests.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We would like to thank Aimee Slater, Carlos Acevedo,
Marlee Walters and Rachel Smiley for the valuable contribu-
tions to the project. We are grateful to our anonymous re-
viewers for their helpful suggestions.
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