Librarians and related information professionals
Most tasks score high and the scores agree. Expect the role to be reorganised.
Exposure is not job loss: it shows how much of the work generative AI could do today. Whether that turns into transformation, productivity gains or cuts depends on employers, regulation — and on you.
0 = today’s generative AI cannot perform any of the job’s tasks, 100 = it could do all of them fully. The pale band is the spread across tasks.
Work out your own score ↓What can you do?
🤖 Written with AIThis text was written by artificial intelligence from the data points shown; it is built on verified figures but may contain mistakes.· 12/10/2026How is it made?
With an exposure score of 55/100, librarians see significant AI augmentation in cataloguing and search retrieval. AI accelerates metadata generation and reference workflows, shifting professional focus toward specialized archival curation, user instruction, and institutional knowledge strategy.
What changes
- Automated synthesis accelerates complex multi-database reference searches and initial query resolution for patrons.
- AI assists in metadata tagging, automated classification schemes, and semantic information retrieval models.
- Drafting scholarly reports, literature summaries, and collection discovery guides becomes significantly faster.
What stays human
- Evaluating nuanced user needs and tailoring community information services to diverse patron demographics.
- Physical preservation, archival provenance authentication, and rare collection acquisition decisions remain deeply expert-driven.
- Ethical information literacy instruction and navigating complex intellectual property or licensing agreements.
What to learn
- Mastering semantic search architecture, ontology development, and retrieval-augmented generation for digital repositories.
- Developing critical AI information literacy curricula to help patrons detect hallucinations and bias.
- Managing digital asset management platforms and API-based metadata enrichment tools.
Task by task
The ILO scored every task of the occupation separately, as the average of two AI models (GPT-4o and Gemini). The pale band is the range between the two models' scores, the dot the ILO's final score (for a few tasks expert review placed it outside the band).
- Devising and implementing schemes and conceptual models for the storage, organization, classification and retrieval of information62
- Performing manual, on-line and interactive media reference searches, making interlibrary loans and performing other functions to assist users in accessing library materials.62
- Retrieving material and providing information to business and other users based on the collection itself or on library and information-network systems56
- Preparing scholarly papers and reports55
- Organizing, classifying and cataloguing library material55
- Conducting research and analysing or modifying library and information services in accordance with changes in users' needs55
- Organizing, developing and maintaining a systematic collection of books, periodicals and other printed or audiovisually and digitally recorded material54
- Selecting and recommending acquisitions of books and other printed or audiovisually and digitally recorded material51
- Managing library borrowing and interlibrary loan facilities and information networks50
How much does it affect you?
Every job is different: mark which of these tasks you do and how much, and we'll compute your own, time-weighted score.
For each task: I don't do it · sometimes · most of my job.
- Devising and implementing schemes and conceptual models for the storage, organization, classification and retrieval of information(62)
- Performing manual, on-line and interactive media reference searches, making interlibrary loans and performing other functions to assist users in accessing library materials.(62)
- Retrieving material and providing information to business and other users based on the collection itself or on library and information-network systems(56)
- Preparing scholarly papers and reports(55)
- Organizing, classifying and cataloguing library material(55)
- Conducting research and analysing or modifying library and information services in accordance with changes in users' needs(55)
- Organizing, developing and maintaining a systematic collection of books, periodicals and other printed or audiovisually and digitally recorded material(54)
- Selecting and recommending acquisitions of books and other printed or audiovisually and digitally recorded material(51)
- Managing library borrowing and interlibrary loan facilities and information networks(50)
You are exactly at the occupation average. (The occupation's score: 55.)
About 100% of your working time goes to highly exposed tasks (score ≥ 50).
- • Devising and implementing schemes and conceptual models for the storage, organization, classification and retrieval of information
- • Performing manual, on-line and interactive media reference searches, making interlibrary loans and performing other functions to assist users in accessing library materials.
- • Managing library borrowing and interlibrary loan facilities and information networks
- • Selecting and recommending acquisitions of books and other printed or audiovisually and digitally recorded material
An estimate from the ILO task scores. Everything is computed in your browser — nothing is sent or stored.
How many people work in this occupational group?
Share of the Legal, social and cultural professionals group in total employment, by country (Eurostat, ISCO 2-digit — 4-digit breakdowns are not public by country).
Table view
| Country | Legal, social and cultural professionals |
|---|---|
| Luxembourg | 9.6% · 32 thousand · 2025 |
| Netherlands | 4.5% · 444 thousand · 2025 |
| Sweden | 4.3% · 227 thousand · 2025 |
| Croatia | 4.1% · 70 thousand · 2025 |
| Belgium | 3.8% · 197 thousand · 2025 |
| Denmark | 3.6% · 109 thousand · 2025 |
| Greece | 3.5% · 153 thousand · 2025 |
| Slovenia | 3.5% · 35 thousand · 2025 |
| Norway | 3.4% · 99 thousand · 2025 |
| United Kingdom | 3.4% · 1,162 thousand · 2025 |
| Lithuania | 3.3% · 49 thousand · 2025 |
| Germany | 3.3% · 1,412 thousand · 2025 |
| Finland | 3.3% · 86 thousand · 2025 |
| Hungary | 3.3% · 154 thousand · 2025 |
| France | 3.3% · 964 thousand · 2025 |
| Austria | 3.2% · 146 thousand · 2025 |
| Switzerland | 3.2% · 156 thousand · 2025 |
| Cyprus | 3.1% · 16 thousand · 2025 |
| Iceland | 3.1% · 7 thousand · 2025 |
| Spain | 3.1% · 695 thousand · 2025 |
| Estonia | 3.1% · 21 thousand · 2025 |
| Bulgaria | 3.1% · 90 thousand · 2025 |
| Portugal | 2.9% · 153 thousand · 2025 |
| Slovakia | 2.7% · 72 thousand · 2025 |
| Czechia | 2.6% · 136 thousand · 2025 |
| Italy | 2.5% · 601 thousand · 2025 |
| Latvia | 2.5% · 22 thousand · 2025 |
| Ireland | 2.4% · 68 thousand · 2025 |
| Poland | 2.2% · 386 thousand · 2025 |
| Malta | 1.9% · 6 thousand · 2025 |
| Romania | 1.9% · 147 thousand · 2025 |
What do they earn?
Mean gross monthly earnings in the major occupational group (Professionals). Eurostat's earnings survey only publishes pay by occupation at 1 digit, so this is the job's broader group. Enterprises with 10+ employees, 2022.
By country, at purchasing power parity (PPS/month), so countries with different price levels can be compared.
- Switzerland6,389
- Luxembourg5,274
- Ireland4,873
- Germany4,807
- Belgium4,799
- Denmark4,446
- Norway4,237
- Austria4,099
- Netherlands4,031
- Iceland3,875
- EU273,850
- France3,791
- Finland3,769
- Romania3,559
- Sweden3,416
- Spain3,413
- Slovenia3,326
- Italy3,305
- Cyprus3,271
- Lithuania3,221
- Croatia2,890
- Czechia2,871
- Malta2,825
- Poland2,783
- Hungary2,777
- Portugal2,755
- Latvia2,671
- Estonia2,599
- Bulgaria2,359
- Slovakia2,345
- Greece2,321
Source: Eurostat Structure of Earnings Survey (earn_ses22_21), every four years. The United Kingdom is not covered by the survey.
Outlook to 2035
Employment in the Legal, social and cultural professionals group according to Cedefop's 2026 forecast.
thousand · Cedefop Skills Forecast 2026 · 2026–2035: projection
Replacement demand is the jobs left by people retiring or changing careers — even a shrinking occupation can have many openings.
Related occupations
Sources: ILO WP140 (2025) · Eurostat lfsa_egai2d · Cedefop Skills Forecast 2026 · WEF Future of Jobs 2025 · ESCO. The exposure score measures how much of an occupation's tasks generative AI could perform — not whether the job disappears. For information only, not career advice. How do we calculate this?