Before becoming a LIS professional, I worked in bookstores, usually in supervisory or management positions, for about 7 years. Retail is not an easy environment, and it requires a certain set of skills to be successful, especially as you take on responsibilities that require considerations and actions beyond your own efforts. These include good time management to address a wide range of expectations and responsibilities, the ability to communicate across diverse audiences, adaptability to a changing environment, flexibility to deal with a dynamic workplace and clientele, the ability to quickly solve problems; creative and critical thinking in stressful situations, using the principles of emotional intelligence to provide good customer service, and leading by example. Essentially, retail work provided an opportunity to begin building the soft skills so often discussed in current professional literature. As a LIS professional and professor, I see soft skills as essential to Information Science.

Soft Skills in Information Science

Why are soft skills important in Information Science? Information Science is a profession based on service to others. We do what we do to address the information needs of others. As a librarian, as a database developer, as someone who works with data sets or works on data mining, our work is all about the end user and what those end users need. Our profession requires us to meet users where they are, not where we expect or want them to be. This is why specialties like User Experience (UX) Design exist; why academic libraries have subject specialists; why databases need metadata experts to describe records for successful information retrieval. To do anything effectively in Information Science requires soft skills. We must be able to communicate with end users to understand information needs and deliver a successful result. Yet, these can be very different depending on the user. As technology changes, we need to be able to quickly adapt to new ways to access and transmit information. In addition, people rarely come to us with simple or easy questions, tasks, or challenges. We, in turn, need to creatively address these questions, complete the tasks, and solve these puzzles and problems in an efficient way. Time management gives us the capability to efficiently handle all our many responsibilities in a limited time frame. Otherwise, we cannot be as effective as our users need us to be.

Soft Skills in the Workplace

However, the importance of soft skills is not just about how we provide services. Theses skills are also central to how we work together. Information Science, as a profession, requires collaboration and cooperation within organizations and across specialties. There is a reason why there are so many group projects in graduate school. They help students develop the skills to work with others and to learn how to deal with problems and issues that are inevitable in any group setting. We bring our full selves into these situations, including our emotions, our perceptions, and our expectations, which will create tension, even in the best situations. To be successful, we must be able to navigate these very human characteristics and tendencies, in ourselves and in others. In other words, we must be aware of and be able to control our own emotions as we work with others, as well as engaging in interpersonal relationships with empathy. This might range from simply listening to others to better understand their point of view to offering conflict mediation. Those who can do this well often emerge as leaders. It is important to note that leadership is not always about administration, but rather it is how we can inspire others and guide them towards their goals, be it as a professional or as an information seeker.

Information Science continues to grow and evolve. There are so many different skill sets that contribute to the development and success of the discipline. However, regardless of job title or position within an organization, to be effective and to be successful, we need to center soft skills in how we engage with and present the work we do. Information Science, at its core, is a service discipline and soft skills will allow us to continue to provide the best possible services to an increasingly diverse and complex users.

Resources on Soft Skills

Soft Skills tend to be developed through experience but there are other ways to learn. Here are a few resources to begin:

Mastering Soft Skills for the Workplace

It’s Your Yale: Developing Soft Skills

Soft Skills to Pay the Bills