The Biggest Lie MLS Professionals Tell Themselves About Their Careers

Photo by Aubrey Odom on Unsplash

One of the most common things I hear from MLS professionals isn’t that they hate being librarians. It’s that they feel stuck.

They tell me they’ve been in libraries for too long. Their experience will be misunderstood by employers. The degree they have is too specialized. That changing careers would mean starting over from the beginning.

At first glance, those concerns seem like they’re about the job market.

I don’t think they are. I think they’re about perception.

Somewhere along the way, many MLS professionals stop thinking of themselves as professionals who work in libraries and start thinking of themselves as librarians who can only work in libraries. That may sound like a minor distinction, but it completely changes how you view your career.

When your identity becomes attached to a job title, it’s easy to convince yourself that leaving the profession means leaving your expertise behind. Every job posting feels like it’s asking for experience you don’t have, even when you’ve been developing the underlying skills for years.

Think about what you’ve actually done throughout your career.

You’ve researched complex questions with incomplete information. You’ve taught people how to evaluate sources and solve problems. You’ve managed projects, coordinated events, learned new technologies, collaborated with community partners, handled competing priorities, and communicated with people from every imaginable background.

None of those are exclusively library skills. They’re professional skills. The library simply happens to be where you developed them.

That’s an important distinction because employers don’t hire degrees. They don’t even hire job titles. They hire people who can solve problems.

The challenge is that many MLS professionals have spent years describing themselves through the lens of librarianship instead of through the lens of the value they create. After enough time, that way of thinking becomes internalized. You stop asking, “What am I capable of?” and start asking, “What jobs are librarians allowed to do?”

Those are two very different questions.

The first opens possibilities. The second creates limitations that often don’t exist.

That’s why I believe career transitions are often a mindset problem before they’re a job market problem.

I’m not suggesting the market is easy. It’s competitive, and finding the right opportunity takes time. Rejections happen, industries have their own barriers, and some career pivots require learning new skills.

But those challenges are very different from believing you’re trapped.

If you believe your experience has no value outside libraries, you’ll apply for fewer jobs because you’ve already decided the answer will be no. You’ll undersell yourself during interviews because you don’t fully recognize the value of your own experience. You’ll spend more time focusing on everything you haven’t done instead of everything you’ve already accomplished.

That belief becomes the obstacle long before the job market has a chance to be.

I’ve coached enough MLS professionals to know that most aren’t starting from scratch. They’re starting from experiences they haven’t fully learned to recognize yet.

The moment you stop defining yourself by your job title, you begin to see your career differently.

You’re no longer “just a librarian.”

You’re:

• A researcher
• An educator
• A project manager
• An information professional
• A trainer
• A communicator
• A strategist.

Those identities have always been there. The library was simply the setting where they developed.

Once you recognize that, the conversation shifts from “What else can I do?” to “How do I position the experience I already have?”

In my experience, that’s the question that leads to meaningful career change.

I adapted this article from my guide, **Beyond the Stacks: How MLS Professionals Build Careers Inside and Outside the Library.**

I wrote Beyond the Stacks because I wanted MLS professionals to see what I eventually realized myself. Your career is bigger than your job title. Inside the guide, I break down the mindset shifts, transferable skills, career paths, resume strategies, LinkedIn optimization, and interview techniques that can help you confidently position yourself for opportunities both inside and outside traditional librarianship.

If you’ve been telling yourself you’re stuck, I hope that this guide helps you see what has been true all along. You’re not starting over. You’re building on a foundation you’ve already spent years creating.