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If you like science but not the idea of spending your life at a lab bench, there is a career built around a different question: how do people find, trust and reuse what scientists have already found? That is library and information science (LIS). Today it covers digital repositories and research data as much as books on shelves.
What does a library and information scientist actually do?
The work is organising knowledge so that the right person finds it at the right moment. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics says in its occupational profile of librarians that librarians create and use databases of library materials, organise materials so they are easy to find, teach classes about information resources, and must keep updating their knowledge as technology changes. Special librarians in corporate, law and medical libraries usually add knowledge of their field to a library master's, and some employers want a subject degree too. Medical librarians help health professionals, patients and researchers find health and science information.
In India, much of this work is now digital. The INFLIBNET Centre in Gandhinagar is an autonomous inter-university centre of the University Grants Commission. It began as a UGC project in 1991 and works to modernise university libraries. It also runs Shodhganga, an open repository of research theses. The National Digital Library of India is developed and maintained by IIT Kharagpur, funded by the Ministry of Education, and says it has more than 1 crore users.
How does a science background help in library science?
The man often called the father of library science in India was a mathematician. S. R. Ranganathan earned BA and MA degrees in mathematics and taught it before becoming librarian of the University of Madras in 1924, according to his Wikipedia biography. He published the Five Laws of Library Science in 1931, and in 1933 Colon Classification, a faceted system that builds a subject from its separate parts. His birthday, 12 August, is observed in India as National Librarian Day.
The link is still strong in research libraries. In a 2018 survey of librarians who do data work, Lisa Federer of the NIH Library found two kinds of data librarian: generalists who serve many fields, and subject specialists who serve one discipline. Respondents valued a broad range of skills, especially soft skills such as communication and building relationships with researchers. Traditional skills such as cataloguing and collection development were rated less important.
A BSc gives you three things that are hard to teach later:
Vocabulary: you can tell a review article from a primary study.
Method: you know what a researcher needs to repeat an experiment, which good data records must capture.
Credibility: scientists listen to someone who understands their work.
If your subject knowledge feels patchy, the Fermi Concept Library sets out every concept in physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics and computing, each with its own lesson and its place in the map.
How do you become a librarian after a BSc in India?
The usual route is a bachelor's in library and information science (BLISc) followed by a master's (MLISc), offered by many universities. Admission rules, seats and fees vary, so read each university's current prospectus.
For the technical side, the Indian Statistical Institute lists a two-year M.S. in Library and Information Science in Bengaluru, run at its Documentation Research and Training Centre.
For teaching LIS in colleges or for a research fellowship, the UGC-NET conducted by NTA decides eligibility for Assistant Professor and the Junior Research Fellowship. Check the current notice for subjects and dates.
If data roles appeal to you, basic database skills help. Our guide to learning SQL for data projects is a practical first step.
What are the pay and job prospects?
Indian salaries vary widely by employer and we found no reliable national figure, so check real recruitment notices. For a benchmark from a large system, the BLS profile reports 142,300 librarian jobs in the US in 2025. It gives a median pay of $68,270 in May 2025 and projects 3% growth from 2025 to 2035, with about 12,600 openings a year. The BLS lists a master's degree as the usual entry qualification.
This is a steady field, not a booming one; data, digital or subject skills widen your options.
Is library science right for you? A four-week test
Try the work before you commit to a degree.
Week 1: Interview your school or college librarian for 15 minutes. Ask: "What did you do today that a visitor never sees?" and "Which skills do you wish you had learned earlier?"
Week 2: Pick a topic from your syllabus and find five sources on it: two textbooks, two research papers and one dataset. Note how you found each one.
Week 3: Organise those sources into a reference list with consistent details (author, year, title, link) and a one-line note on each.
Week 4: Explain to a friend which source to trust most and why.
If weeks 2 to 4 felt satisfying rather than tedious, LIS deserves a closer look. If you liked the public-facing part most, read about careers in museums and science centres. If you liked the data most, see biodiversity informatics, where biology and databases meet.
Start with that 15-minute conversation with a librarian this week.
