Libraries, Leadership, and Synergies – Career Directions in our Profession: Quo Vadis?

Inspired by a LinkedIn post from a librarian seeking career-transition advice, this article examines career trends and opportunities within the library profession, addressing concerns about career dissatisfaction and the factors driving librarians to leave the field. Recent literature’s most cited drivers of career dissatisfaction include lack of direction, capped income potential, and restricted access to resources. Additional factors include under-funding, understaffing, burnout, low pay, lack of career advancement, and external pressures like book challenges and curricular censorship. Career-transition literature highlights librarians’ many transferable skills including research, teaching, technology, and data science. Plausible career-transition destinations include several library-adjacent fields such as management consulting, publishing, and program coordination. Transferable skills can also translate to non-adjacent fields including, for example, teaching, IT, data science, human resources, marketing, law, and writing. Among essential drivers of career fulfillment, recent literature cites sense of being valued, constructive workplace cultures, life-sustaining pay, and career-growth opportunities. Support from parent organizations and policy decisions is crucial for talent retention in libraries – the necessary conditions for career fulfillment and retention cannot rest on the individuals’ shoulders alone but also draw upon organizational efforts and cultural conditions.