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Abstractor: Job description and activities

Abstractors are responsible for bringing together bodies of information on a specialist subject area in the form of text 'abstracts' in order to make them available to a variety of audiences. This information may be made accessible to the public or limited to a particular company or organisation. Information scientists and specialist librarians may produce abstracts of research papers and journal articles. Many libraries also subscribe to commercially produced sets of abstracts in hard copy, on CD-ROM or online. The organisations which produce these publications often employ graduates as full-time abstractors.

An abstractor’s key work activities include:

• collating articles and information from a variety of sources;
• accessing and summarising information;
• editing text in preparation for publication;
• ordering information into a system.

An abstractor’s work may also involve downloading the information onto a database to make it available in electronic form.

This is not an occupation in which people make a lifelong career. Many use it to progress on to a career in information science, academic publishing or scientific research. Specialist subject knowledge is required to be an abstractor.

For more information see Information scientist.

AGCAS

Written by Heather Samuel, AGCAS

Last updated:

November 2008

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