Metadata Opportunities for Librarians

As I inch closer toward completion of my MLIS, thoughts invariably turn to what comes next in my career. Though I have a great deal of interest in a traditional library or archival job, including areas such as reference or cataloging, I am also increasingly aware of the possibilities of library and information professionals outside the traditional walls of our field. In a recent blog post, LS 566 classmate Molly Porter discussed her work as an archivist for the NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, and some of the non-traditional and metadata-related activities that increasingly characterize her work. Examples include: the "crafting of a metadata strategy for the center's film and media migration project," continued development and updating of web content, as well as increased social-media activities of varying kinds.

Having had the fantastic opportunity to experience a similar work environment during an internship with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, I can echo the increasing role that metadata plays in the world of information professionals, and the excellent chance it affords us to branch out from our traditional role inside the library. The tasks I was responsible for were two-fold: metadata description of digitized documents into a topical digital archive, and the digitization of project documents and reports, and their subsequent entry into the project's document repository. The former job had me manipulating metadata in a manner that was distinctly similar to the controlled process of library cataloging, including the application of document titles, authors, and even subject headings (created from a archive-specific taxonomy). The latter project, by contrast, bore more similarities to records management and preservation, and any controls placed on the metadata entered were a result of my own preferences. This task, especially, illustrated to me just how important consistency of metadata entry can be to the organization of a database or records repository, and how much responsibility the metadata creator bears for it.

It is exciting that library and information professionals are increasingly afforded the opportunity of metadata-related jobs, not just with scientific organizations such as NASA, but also in the corporate world, with health and medical organizations, and countless other environments in which the manipulation and organization of metadata, records, and digital documents require our background. Would love to hear from any of you that regularly work with metadata, or have been able to find your librarian skills in demand outside the library walls.