page_title: Librarian
section_title: Additional responsibilities
hierarchical_section_title: Librarian / Roles and responsibilities / Additional responsibilities
caption_attribution_description: English: Justin Winsor (1831-1897)
context_page_description: A librarian is a person who works professionally in a library, providing access to information and sometimes social or technical programming to users. In addition, librarians provide instruction on information literacy to users.
context_section_description: Experienced librarians may take administrative positions such as library or information center director or learning resource officer.  Similar to the management of any other organization, they are concerned with the long-term planning of the library, and its relationship with its parent organization (the city or county for a public library, the college/university for an academic library, or the organization served by a special library).  In smaller or specialized libraries, librarians typically perform a wide range of the different duties.
  Representative examples of librarian responsibilities:
  Researching topics of interest for their constituencies.
  Referring patrons to other community organizations and government offices.
  Suggesting appropriate books ("readers' advisory") for children of different reading levels, and recommending novels for recreational reading.
  Reviewing books and journal databases
  Working with other education organisations to establish continual, lifelong learning and further education initiatives
  Facilitating and promoting reading clubs.
  Developing programs for library users of all ages and backgrounds.
  Managing access to electronic information resources.
  Assessing library services and collections in order to best meet library users'needs.
  Building and maintaining collections to respond to changing community needs or demands
  Creating pathfinders
  Writing grants to gain funding for expanded program or collections
  Digitizing collections for online access
  Publishing articles in library science journals
  Answering incoming reference questions via telephone, postal mail, email, fax, and chat
  delivering arts and cultural activities to local communities
  Initiating and establishing  creative digital activities to introduce children to coding, engineering and website building
  Marking promotion and advocacy of library services
  Assisting job seekers and local businesses
  Making and enforcing computer appointments on the public access Internet computers.
caption: Justin Winsor, Librarian of Congress, c. 1885
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