Can anyone tell me about working in information management?

[cinnamonbun]

I'm thinking about applying to do a Masters in Information Science or something related but although I've tried to do some research about it I don't quite get what it's about. What would a typical day involve? I know it depends on the setting where you work (library, local gvernment and so on) but if you could give me a general idea what it involves I'd be grateful!

I did a degree in Library and Information studies way back when in Manchester. The course was later changed to be called 'information management' so I am guessing it's still the sort of thing you could use get work like librarian and might be geared towards that kind of professon. I would guess that now a lot of it would be computer based but also with some of the proper book library type stuff.

I work in a media library now, with music, books and still photographs. A lot of my job is computer based catalogue/filinf stuff but I still have to understand library systems etc.

I don't know if this helps, I work in an Information Services Unit. We provide all kinds of information and have all kinds of roles. One major aspect is providing performance figures/targets extracted from our record management system. We also have a librarian who provides freedom of information/data protection information.

I work in Information Management in the NHS. In our team we deal with data relating to waiting lists and targets, hospital admissions data, patient data and so on.

We support various databases to store information about patients and appointments. It involves quite a lot of IT work. The job can involve interpreting and presenting the data e.g. producing maps showing the addresses of patients registered to a GP surgery or ambulance response times. It could also be designing, building or testing databases, also supporting and maintaining databases. We also extract data from various sources and make it available to customers in different forms.

I don't know anyone I work with that has a Masters specifically in the subject though (my degree is in German!) I would guess that with a more specific qualification you would be able to enter at a higher level and would be probably in more of a management position (I'm talking in the NHS here).

For more about information management in the NHS you could look atwww.ic.nhs.uk/

Thank you all. JJ1471, that's really helpful and it sounds like the sort of thing I'd be interested in.

Information Science/Studies is related to librarianship, whereas I think what you're asking about is more info. management, as described by jj1471, and is related more to IT, but I could be wrong.

I did a postgrad info. studies course, which could have lead to work in traditional libraries (public or academic) but I chose to go down the corporate route working in information centres in banks and accountancy, where you provide externally sourced info on competitors, companies, industries, stockmarkets etc., and these days it's almost all using online/internet-based databases.