FAQ: MLS Professional Skills and Attributes

Professional Skills and Attitudes: Which ones are valued in SLIS careers?

The MLS Advisory Committee has reviewed this list of skills and attitudes they would like to see in SLIS graduates. They recommend that MLS graduates should be able/prepared to:

Appreciate and defend core values of the field: providing access to information
Understand and anticipate users’ needs
Take an entrepreneurial approach, especially in this increasingly collaborative and interdependent world
Be willing to take risks (and our institutions should support risk taking, acknowledging the possibility of failure)
Possess and demonstrate subject expertise
Talk to others in the community, well beyond the library
Listen to users
Collaborate, build coalitions, work on teams (able to optimize one’s own area without sub-optimizing others)
Engage in public involvement and advocacy, locally as well as with information policy issues
Be participants and community builders
Have skills in negotiation and conflict management
Understand the impact of changing demographics; understand social and cultural environments of library users; engage in outreach
Develop support for libraries, including fund raising
Develop and maintain enthusiasm for the profession; this includes learning to be good new librarians, standing up for the kinds of training they need