Career Pathways

The UCL programme gives you the flexibility to tailor your studies to your career goals. The following career pathways demonstrate optional modules, placement and dissertation combinations that you could take to specialise in your chosen area. Students are also encouraged to tailor their assessments in core modules to fit with their experience and expertise, for example, writing a collection management policy for a fintech knowledge centre, or creating a health-related thesaurus. All modules are subject to minimum numbers.

Potential career pathways include:

Academic Librarianship

INST0051: Academic and Journal Publishing / HPSC0044 Science and Publishing
INST0054: Information Literacy
- Placement at, for example: Goldsmiths, Kings College, London, London School of Economics
- Dissertation on a question related to, for example: The impact of UX on library space, Bias in reference and enquiry work, Decolonising information literacy.

Art and Music Librarianship

INST0070: Knowledge Organisation
INST0054: Information Literacy
INST0058: Illustration and Publishing
- Placement at, for example: National Art Library, Chelsea College of Arts, Royal College of Music
- Dissertation on a question related to, for example: information behaviour of pop music fans, classification in the art domain, music printing in 18^th century Vienna

Digital Librarianship

INST0044: Introduction to Digitisation
INST0045: Digital Curation
INST0069: Graph Databases and Semantic Technologies
- Placement at, for example: National Art Library
- Dissertation on a question related to, for example: digitising historic graffiti, videogaming and metadata, artificial intelligence and law libraries

Health Librarianship

INST0035: Health Librarianship
INST0070: Knowledge Organisation
INST0057: Information Governance
INST0081: Trauma Informed Approaches
- Placement at, for example: Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, The Kings Fund
- Dissertation on a question related to, for example: knowledge management in the NHS, the future of clinical librarianship.

Law Librarianship

INST0057: Information Governance
INST0070: Knowledge Organisation
- Placement at, for example: Lincoln’s Inn, Berwin Leighton Paisner
- Dissertation on a question related to, for example: barrister information needs and activities, the value of corporate libraries, AI and legal knowledge management

Public Librarianship

INST0054: Information Literacy
INST0035: Health Librarianship
INST0081: Trauma Informed Approaches
- Placement at, for example: Barbican Library
- Dissertation on a question related to, for example: the impact of reading for pleasure schemes, the provision of refugee services, digital privacy and inclusion.

School Librarianship

INST0054: Information Literacy
INST0081: Trauma Informed Approaches
- Placement at, for example: Forest Hill School, City of London Academy
- Dissertation on a question related to, for example: Collection diversity, the librarian’s role in the EPQ, reluctant readers.

Special Collections

INST0023: Manuscript Studies
INST0015: Historical Bibliography
INST009: Collections Care
INST0045: Digital Curation
- Placement at, for example: Lambeth Palace Library, Royal College of Physicians, Wiener Library
- Dissertation on a question related to, for example: Collecting vernacular manuscripts, nineteenth century travel accounts, management and cataloguing of cloth bindings.