The purpose of this book is to explore the main issues facing information workers employed by media organizations, that is, broadcasters and publishers of newspapers, magazines and websites. Each chapter examines an issue that librarians, archivists, cataloguers, researchers and other information professionals are likely to face in their working life, with chapters written by practitioners who have faced these problems themselves. The aim is to spread knowledge acquired through practical experience to help solve and prevent problems as they arise. ‘Media librarian’ in this book does not refer to those looking after multimedia collections in public or academic libraries, although some of the issues discussed may be useful to them. In addition, although controversial among practitioners, the author uses the term ‘media librarians’ to refer to all who carry out information work for media organizations (although their actual job title may be ‘Researcher’, ‘Media Manager’ or ‘Information Manager’, for example) for historical reasons, for convenience and because she has never considered libraries to be exclusively collections of books.

Media librarians have a low profile in the information profession and among their employers. Academic, legal and public librarians are often intrigued to discover that some of their peers work for the same people who provide their television programmes and daily newspaper. Journalists write articles perpetuating the idea that libraries are dusty book collections run by stern ladies with date stamps, unaware that the people who provided their newspaper database or background research are part of this profession.

Yet media companies, producing vast quantities of content in an increasing variety of formats, need people both to help them fill up column inches, pages or hours, and to organize this content afterwards so that it can be found again. The profession offering the best skills to meet that need is librarianship and information services. Librarians are the specialists in connecting people who work in media companies with the items they need to do their jobs and putting it where they can find it again. Although unlikely to be called librarians or, in the 21st century, to be working in a room called ‘the library’, information professionals continue to carry out this task for media organizations throughout the world.