My last job was in a corporate library. My job title was "Librarian". I was technically a Records Manager. The people I worked with appreciated the work I did and the found the library, and me, useful and helpful.
Corporate librarians are out there and do good work!
I my chaotic corporation environment, where documentation does not exist and all documents are all over the place, I always tell people to hire a Librarian.
Stereotypically, a high-middle-age lady, who likes cats, drinks tea and has an urge/compulsion to sort things. A person who loses sleep if some serial numbers (e.g. ISBNs) are out of order.
It was actually in a power plant, which was not as interesting as it sounds. At least most days. My masters degree is Library Science. I've had a weird and winding career. I'm a sysadmin now.
Library Science sounds fascinating. I always assumed you master dewey decimal and you collect your certificate as a librarian. What other (broad) topics does such a degree cover?
Libraries are systems to organize large amounts of information (not necessarily physical locations, there are digital libraries now). So I imagine you learn sorting and indexing techniques, processes for getting information and metadata in and out of the system, and much more
A library is a database of unstructured documents with structured metadata, which might need to be indexed, queried, and accessed in many different ways
I just wanted to say that this is an elegant and beautiful definition of a library:
"A library is a database of unstructured documents with structured metadata, which might need to be indexed, queried, and accessed in many different ways."
If there's a bad Dewey Decimal joke, I ain't heard it! I got mine in the late 90s, right when the web was taking over, so it was pretty different then. I was pretty lucky, I saw the web and went for it. I was a web master for one of the first ever online classes, and just kind of stuck with it over the years. The degrees are pretty tech heavy now, people end up doing all sorts of different things.
My degree covered everything from copyright law to NoSQL databases. Most modern programs are highly interdisciplinary and students have wide latitude to select courses that suit their own interests. I did learn a little Dewey, though.
I think that's a common assumption, but as the other commenter said, libraries (and archives and museums) are fundamentally concerned with applying structured metadata to unstructured information and organizing it. The tools for doing this have always been highly technical even before they were computerized.
You can definitely still pick a more "traditional" library career and avoid working with computers more than absolutely necessary if you want to, but the training will still expose you to a core set of technology concepts (database systems, digital resource management, metadata essentials, etc).
> My masters degree is Library Science. [...] I'm a sysadmin now.
The retroactive combination sounds a bit like an Informatics degree. (Which in my neck of the woods is taught by the same school/department that does MLISes.
Corporate librarians are out there and do good work!