What professional roles do you play as a librarian/information professional? How have they changed during your career? And perhaps most important, how do you see them changing and evolving in the future?

These issues are discussed in an intriguing recent article in New Library World, “A systematic literature review informing library and information professionals’ emerging roles.” Evgenia Vassilakaki and Valentini Moniarou-Papaconstantinou, of the Library Science & Information Systems Department of TEI of Athens, Greece, uncovered their findings from peer-reviewed literature published between 2000 and 2014.

Although a variety of libraries were included, the authors state that “the majority of the literature focused on academic libraries.” All of the papers are in English, and “the majority of studies reported on research conducted in the United Kingdom and North America.”

Their findings have implications given the changes taking place in work, society and education, and how those changes affect our institutions. Six emerging roles were discovered, all of which would seem to be applicable within many types of libraries and information centres…READ MORE: Emerging roles and possible futures for librarians and information professionals | Emerald Group Publishing