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What career(s) or industries might best fit me?
I'm good at reading, writing, I'm creative, and I'm decently with technology. My hobbies are reading, playing games, and and watching TV shows. I'm none-too-great with math, though. I'm interested in becoming something like a librarian or someone who helps manage files. What strength(s)/experience(s) do you recommend for the careers in question? How can I utilize what I'm good at to find a job/start a career in one of those fields?
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Samantha’s Answer
Hello Anna! If you're interested in more than just working in a traditional library, a degree in library science actually opens some really exciting doors. One field that attracts a lot of library science graduates is ontology and knowledge engineering — it's all about organizing and structuring information so that computers can understand relationships between concepts, which is essentially a high-tech version of the classification systems you already study.
The reason library science is such a natural fit is that you're already being trained in the core skills: taxonomy, metadata, and controlled vocabularies. Companies in tech, healthcare, government, and publishing are hiring people with exactly that background for roles like Ontologist, Taxonomy Manager, and Information Architect — and these jobs often pay $70,000–$130,000 or more. If you want to explore it, start with Protégé (free ontology software) and look into RDF and OWL. A library science background isn't just relevant here — it's actually a real advantage.
The reason library science is such a natural fit is that you're already being trained in the core skills: taxonomy, metadata, and controlled vocabularies. Companies in tech, healthcare, government, and publishing are hiring people with exactly that background for roles like Ontologist, Taxonomy Manager, and Information Architect — and these jobs often pay $70,000–$130,000 or more. If you want to explore it, start with Protégé (free ontology software) and look into RDF and OWL. A library science background isn't just relevant here — it's actually a real advantage.
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Lorna’s Answer
To be honest a good way of seeing what job/career you would like and be good at is to find out what part-time or volunteer work is similar, related to the potential career, or gives you access to people who are already doing that job and trying that out. That really is the best low risk way to tell what parts you do and don't like which can help give you more information to narrow down your search or even expand it by exposing you to related options that you otherwise wouldn't know existed. The work experience that you get will help whether you go into that field or not especially for having things to put on your resume which can be difficult when you are first starting out. It is great to get part-time work and get paid at the same time if you can, but volunteering should also not be discounted. That can be a great way to start if you are too young for a paid position, need work experience to get your foot in the door, want to start with a lower time commitment, or you just can't do part-time work for whatever reason. You mentioned librarian as one of your interested careers, so I would suggest talking to your school and/or local community librarian or librarians and asking if they have any volunteering or part-time jobs open that you could do. Even if you aren't able to do volunteering or part-time work, I would still suggest talking to your school and/or local librarian about what their day is like, what they did to get there, etc. They are very accessible members of the community that are there to help you, so don't be afraid to ask questions.