Transforming LIS Professionals into Knowledge Professionals

The image of a librarian quietly stamping due dates and shelving books no longer captures what the profession actually does. Library and Information Science (LIS) professionals today sit at the centre of how organisations and societies create, organise, and use knowledge. As the economy shifts from producing goods to producing ideas, the people who know how to manage information are being asked to do something far more ambitious: become knowledge professionals. This is not a cosmetic change in job title. It is a fundamental redefinition of what the profession is for, what skills it demands, and where its practitioners can work.

From information handlers to knowledge professionals 🔗

To understand this shift, it helps to separate two ideas that are often confused: information and knowledge. Information is organised data, such as a catalogue record, a journal article, or a database entry. Knowledge is what happens when people interpret, connect, and apply that information to solve problems or make decisions. A knowledge professional works at this second level. They do not just store and retrieve documents; they help people and organisations turn scattered information into something useful.

The driver behind this change is the rise of the knowledge economy, where knowledge is the most vital factor in the long-term success of an individual or an organisation. In such an economy, valuable knowledge lives in databases, in files, and crucially, inside people’s minds. Someone has to capture, organise, and share that knowledge across the organisation, and LIS professionals are uniquely trained for exactly this task. Their core competencies, such as classification, indexing, retrieval, and user-needs analysis, map directly onto the discipline of knowledge management.

This explains why employers and researchers increasingly describe librarians as knowledge professionals who are expected to understand what an organisation’s knowledge assets are, how to manage them, and how to use them to deliver maximum value to clients. The job is no longer defined by the building you work in. It is defined by the outcome you produce, which is better decisions through better access to knowledge.

Why the knowledge economy needs this role 🔗

In a knowledge-driven economy, organisations face a recurring problem. They generate huge volumes of information but struggle to find, reuse, and learn from it. Reports get written and forgotten. Expertise walks out of the door when an employee leaves. Research data sits unused because no one can locate or interpret it. This is where the knowledge professional adds measurable value, by building the systems and habits that keep knowledge flowing rather than leaking away.

India recognised this connection at the highest policy level. The National Knowledge Commission (NKC), constituted in 2005 to advise the Prime Minister on building a knowledge society, treated public libraries as an essential element of the foundation of a knowledge economy. The Commission’s working group on libraries laid out a detailed agenda, including setting up a National Commission on Libraries, conducting a national library census, and networking different types of libraries through modern technology. Significantly, the NKC also called for revamping LIS education, training, and research so that the country’s manpower in information management could meet the demands of a knowledge society. The message was clear: a knowledge economy cannot run without skilled knowledge professionals.

Interdisciplinary collaboration as the new normal 🔗

One of the biggest differences between the old and new versions of the profession is that knowledge work cannot be done in isolation. Knowledge in any serious field is interdisciplinary. A single research project on, say, climate-resilient agriculture might involve data scientists, economists, soil experts, and policymakers. The knowledge professional’s job is to connect these people to the information they need and, just as importantly, to connect their outputs to each other.

This is why collaboration across domains has become central to effective knowledge management. Knowledge management itself differs significantly from traditional librarianship and information management, and operating in it requires LIS professionals to apply their skills in new and often commercial contexts. You cannot serve a hospital, a tech firm, or a research institute well unless you understand at least the language and workflow of that domain.

Embedded librarianship and active co-creation 🔗

The most visible form of this collaboration is embedded librarianship, where the professional works directly inside a research team, a business unit, or a project group rather than waiting at a reference desk for queries. A health sciences librarian at a major medical institute, for example, might work alongside medical researchers, data scientists, and public health specialists to build knowledge resources that support integrated approaches to complex health problems. The librarian is no longer outside the work looking in; they are part of the team that produces the knowledge.

This collaborative posture also extends to how the profession trains itself. LIS education has always been interdisciplinary, sitting at the meeting point of knowledge organisation, information retrieval, and technology. Modern programmes deepen this by building partnerships with information technology institutions, which expose students and practitioners to current tools and methods. These partnerships strengthen technical skills and foster the cross-disciplinary thinking that knowledge work demands.

Building bridges between specialised fields 🔗

Collaboration is not only about working with experts; it is about helping experts find each other. A knowledge professional supporting interdisciplinary research helps scholars locate relevant work in adjacent fields they might never search themselves. This can mean creating cross-disciplinary taxonomies, developing knowledge visualisation tools that reveal hidden connections between separate research areas, or facilitating communities of practice that bring specialists together. In each case the professional acts as a bridge, reducing the friction that usually keeps disciplines apart.

Expanding professional horizons 🔗

If the role has changed and collaboration is now essential, it follows that the skill set must expand too. The work and profile of the information professional is no longer limited to the world of libraries. Knowledge professionals are needed in corporate research and development, consultancies, hospitals, government think tanks, publishing houses, and technology companies. Serving this broader and more specialised clientele requires going well beyond the traditional curriculum.

The new core skills 🔗

Research on what employers actually want gives a useful map. A large survey of LIS alumni from ten Indian LIS schools identified five broad areas of essential knowledge, skills, and abilities: traditional library skills, research skills, computing skills, data management skills, and soft skills. The same study found that computing skills, library automation, and digitisation are considered absolutely essential for today’s professionals, while soft skills such as communication emerged as surprisingly important. The lesson is that technical depth and human skills now matter equally.

Data has become a central knowledge asset, and this has created a whole family of new responsibilities. These include data curation, which means organising, cleaning, and preparing data for analysis; research data management, which means supporting the storage, access, and long-term preservation of research datasets; data visualisation, which means communicating insights clearly; and basic statistical literacy, so the professional can understand the material they are managing. Employers of digital scholarship librarians now expect graduates to be familiar with research data management and the ecosystem of digital publications, not merely to know how to catalogue a book.

Curriculum and lifelong learning 🔗

These demands are reshaping how the profession is taught. Leading Indian universities are revising their LIS curricula to add advanced courses in data science, knowledge management, digital curation, and information architecture alongside the classical subjects. This is a deliberate effort to produce graduates who can step into specialised knowledge roles rather than only conventional library posts. The findings from skills research feed directly into this, helping educators design and upgrade courses around the competencies the market actually rewards.

Yet a one-time degree is no longer enough. Because technology and information practices evolve constantly, professionals must commit to lifelong learning to stay current. Short courses, professional certifications, and on-the-job upskilling are now part of a normal career, not optional extras. The professional who stops learning quickly finds their skills outdated in a field defined by change.

A note of realism 🔗

This transformation is not automatic or guaranteed. Researchers have pointed out that despite the natural overlap between librarianship and knowledge management, KM has been slow to find a broad place within wider LIS practice. There is also a stubborn perception problem: in many settings, libraries are still viewed mainly as places to shelve books, and librarians are undervalued as a result. Overcoming this requires professionals to actively demonstrate their value, communicate their expanded role, and move into spaces where knowledge work is visibly happening. The opportunity is real, but it has to be claimed.

What this means for the profession’s future 🔗

Putting these three threads together gives a clear picture. The knowledge economy has created demand for people who can manage knowledge as a strategic asset. Interdisciplinary collaboration has become the standard way that valuable knowledge is produced and shared. And serving this new environment requires LIS professionals to expand their skills far beyond the traditional curriculum into data, technology, research support, and communication.

The professionals who embrace this shift are not abandoning their heritage. The core strengths of the discipline, namely organising information, understanding user needs, and ensuring equitable access to knowledge, remain as relevant as ever. What changes is the scale and ambition of where those strengths are applied. The librarian becomes a knowledge architect, a research partner, and a connector of people and ideas. For students entering the field in India, this is an encouraging message: the profession is widening, not shrinking, and the skills you build can take you well beyond the library walls.

What do you think? If you were entering the LIS profession today, which new skill area, data management, digital scholarship, or interdisciplinary collaboration, would you invest in first, and why? And do you believe Indian workplaces are ready to recognise librarians as knowledge professionals, or is there still a perception gap to close?

References

1. https://realkm.com/2021/10/30/understanding-issues-prospects-and-opportunities-in-knowledge-management-and-library-and-information-science-lis/
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Knowledge_Commission
3. https://www.academia.edu/73361198/Emerging_Knowledge_Management_Competencies_of_LIS_Professionals
4. https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/gkmc-03-2021-0049/full/html
5. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9939587/