Profile of Information Professionals: Between the Traditional and the Emerging

Abstract

The article sets out the results of the research “Characterization of graduates of Archival Science, Library Science, and Information Science in Colombia: 2013-2018” based on the recognition of the professional in the labor field and the correspondence between training and needs of the environment; key elements for the evaluation and decision-making in the curricular processes and the design of policies that strengthen the relationship with the working environment. The results of this research made it possible to identify current needs and challenges to qualify professional training processes, to consolidate the relevance of academic programs, and to strengthen the impact of graduates in the labor field. It is highlighted how the results of previous studies persist or are valid: High employability and low mobility; university libraries and state administrative archives as the main employer; the education and services sectors as the main sources of employment, with a defined term contract employment relationship as the predominant contractual modality and with remuneration of between 2 and 3 current legal monthly minimum wages. These results are in medium tune with current training content, especially from the perspective of fundamental knowledge, and in low tune with emerging areas such as electronic documentation, blockchain, data analytics, open science, big data, and business intelligence. All this framed in Revolution 4.0 and in the problems that these professionals must face in correspondence with other problems in the field of information and knowledge, such as fake news, the phenomenon of disinformation, and the manipulation of the information on social networks.