Welcome to FLASH

Welcome to the FLASH project - Former Librarians Are Seriously Helpful.  FLASH was coined when T and V, both experienced qualified librarians, moved out of the library sector but into roles that made use of their library and information skills.  They realised that they knew a number of other former librarians and wanted to capture the different ways in which people use their library skills, beyond a traditional library setting.

The FLASH project will run for a year and aims to:

•  collate the experiences of people with library qualifications who no longer work as librarians
•  investigate the range of roles that these former librarians have gone into and why
• look at the transferability of skills between librarianship and other employment
• inspire and inform people about the way that traditional library and information skills can be used

Over the next year, we will be inviting 52 former librarians to talk on this blog about what prompted them to move on from libraries, about their current role and the ways in which they use their library skills in this environment.  At the end of the year, we will collate this information and attempt to draw some conclusions about life beyond the library sector with the view to publishing an article on careers beyond libraries.

If you fit into the profile of a librarian who no longer works in libraries and would like to help with this project, please get in touch, either via twitter (@formerlibs) or by email (formerlibrarians@gmail.com).  We will be using a short standard questionairre and it will be possible to be totally anonymous.