Published: September 22, 2017 by Kate M. Spaulding

There’s a new career pathway: Data Science. Check out the suggested courses that can help you land the “sexiest job of the 21st century.”

The iSchool recently introduced a new career pathway – Data Science. Perhaps this doesn’t strike you as very library-sounding? It may not seem so at first, but after learning a little more about what data science is, it makes total sense.

“Data science is the art and science of collecting, organizing, processing, analyzing, archiving, preserving, and providing access to massive amounts of data in order to extract meaningful information” (source). See? Now it makes sense that it falls under the LIS umbrella. Librarians have been organizing and making findable (cataloging) data (collections) since the beginning of time libraries. Now that mankind has shifted from cuneiform to papyrus to paper and now to digital formats, the world needs librarians to make sense of the virtual clutter.

According to Harvard Business Review, Data Scientist [is] the sexiest job of the 21st century. So besides sounding very impressive, you’ll be in high demand, which will give you more options when it comes time for job hunting. Besides the very broad “data librarian,” data-focused job titles include:

• Big data engineer
• Business intelligence analyst
• Customer data analyst
• Data acquisitions specialist
• Data analytics manager
• Data analyst/report writer
• Data and information specialist
• Data architect
• Data archivist
• Data asset manager
• Data curator
• Data metadata specialist
• Data modeler
• Data quality manager
• Data services librarian
• Data visualization specialist
• Data warehouse manager
• Database developer
• Governance data quality steward
• Research data librarian
• Scientific data manager

These types of jobs exist in many industries and many geographic locations, which means you can tailor your course and internship choices to fit your own parameters.

Interested? The iSchool’s Data Science Pathway includes more information and links to useful resources. In addition, it lays out a suggested course of study that will help you build your knowledge and skills so that you can start your new career and a get a super sexy job title.