Informational Interviews for LIS Students

Last week I found myself suddenly teary-eyed during a meeting with a librarian. No, I wasn’t sad or upset. The librarian’s obvious love for his work had just inspired and moved me so much that I couldn’t keep my eyes from filling.

I’m only a little bit embarrassed to admit that this wasn’t the first time I got a little misty about librarianship. There are few things I find more inspiring than talking to people who love what they do, and that goes for librarians especially. Accordingly, incorporating informational interviews into my supply of professional development tools was one the best things I did during my first semester in library school (shout out to Zack Frazier and his tips for the first semester). Talking to librarians about their career paths and current positions has given me opportunities to learn about specific library settings, the skills involved in certain positions, and the challenges and joys of librarianship as a profession. I have also expanded my professional network, gained confidence in my interviewing skills, and boosted my enthusiasm for the future.

via flickrCC

The web has lots of resources about informational interviewing. This tutorial from Quintcareers.com and this article from About.com offer guidelines for preparation, active listening, and follow up. Instead of rehashing all of the information found on these and many other sites, I’d like to offer my thoughts on two aspects of informational interviewing that I see as most challenging: working up the courage to ask for an informational interview and figuring out how informational interviews can play a part in job hunting.

Library School Resolutions

Happy New Year, hackers!  I hope that everyone had a nice, relaxing holiday break, and that you’re all refreshed and ready for a new semester.  With classes starting next week for me, I thought I would take some time to come up with a few resolutions to guide me through this next year of library school.  So without further ado, here they are:

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Social Media

I’d like to start my tenure here at Hack Library School with a dose of brutal honesty: I’m not a huge fan of people.

Ok, to be fair, it’s not that I don’t LIKE people.  It’s just that, as an introvert, I find them exhausting, and the prospect of seemingly endless conversations with strangers gives me serious anxiety.

As a grad student who would, one day, like to find a full-time, paying job, I realize the importance of networking.  I know that going to conferences and seeking out new connections in the library field is an excellent way to learn new things and perhaps even procure gainful employment.  I also know that I rarely have the desire to walk up to strangers, awkwardly introduce myself, and attempt to make library-related small talk.  So what’s a library student to do?

Emerging Leaders and Professional Involvement

“G536 Zoom in, Sign up” by Brad Smith via Flickr under CC license

Editor’s Note: This is a Guest Post by Anita R. Dryden

This past year I had the pleasure of participating in the American Library Association’s Emerging Leaders program, which is designed to help new librarians get involved in ALA. Throughout the course of the program you attend leadership training, meet many of the current leaders in ALA, and are assigned to a small group to complete a project for a Division or Round Table. The EL program was a wonderful experience – I loved getting to know a group of really engaged, passionate young professionals while working on an exciting and beneficial project that helped me learn more about how the beast that is ALA works.

[Series] Hack ALA: Annual Party!

Today we’ve got a special guest post from JP Porcaro with lots of advice and fun events to check out this year at ALA. He’s a 2012 Mover and Shaker, head guy at 8-bit library, and tweets at @8bitlibrary.

Hey hacklibschool team, JP here (you know, #partyhard #makeithappen guy). If there’s one regret I have from when I was in library school, it’s not getting involved in the ALA immediately. There’s no larger library community in the USA! My advice to everyone: if there’s one conference you attend every year (besides your state association conference), it should be ALA.

The reason ALA Annual is such an important event is because you get to meet people. Real , flesh-and-blood people. You meet them, build relationships with them, and party hard with them.

It’s not so hard to find new people to meet, because it’s such a gigantic conference,  but there’s some events I am especially excited about that I’d love for you to attend! Add these all to your conference scheduler (and if you aren’t coming to the conference, there’s still time! in fact, I haven’t even booked my flight yet).

Almost every link is direct to the conference scheduler, so you can use this post to build your conference schedule via ALA Connect. Shouts to Jenny Levine, just in general, but also for the conference scheduler.

Thursday:

7pm: ALA Think Tank kicks it off right with the ALA Think Tank Tiki Party. If you don’t know about ALA Think Tank, now you know.

Friday:

9am: Annual 2012 Unconference is always worth waking up for. You meet fabulous people from across the country, from all different types of libraries, with various world experiences and skill sets, and share ideas with them.

3pm: Emerging Leaders Poster Session and Reception is the best mix of the old-school of the ALA & the new-school of us young folks. Everybody gets along, trades business cards, chats…it’s one of the BEST events at ALA that is presented sans-alcohol.

7:30pm: ALAplay is the most fun event at Annual every year. It’s the most relaxed event for sure, and brings together folks from lots of different committees, divisions, etc. Also, there’s cosplay at it, which is a spectacle for those of us not dressed up. I did don a red wig for it last year which was killer.

10pm: ALA Dance Party III is the premier party at ALA and needs no introduction. Last year it was one of the top-twenty highest-attended events according to the conference scheduler!

Saturday:

10:30am: Games and Gaming Forum (GameRT). The reason I put this is because GameRT is the ALA’s newest round table and this is their first event as an official organization. Get involved with it as it rises from the ground-up. Plus, it doesn’t hurt that games are fun.

5pm: Happy Hour (RUSA MARS) has the word “happy hour” in it. Happy is good.

7:30pm: 6th ALA Annual 2012 Newbie & Veteran Librarian Tweet-up is just a laid-back great time to meet librarians who you might know digitally but not personally. I’ve attended every tweetup and have great memories of all of them.

10pm: #ala12 After Hours / LibrarianWardrobe Walkoff Contest! Other than Dance Party, this is THE social event to attend for 6 years running (maybe more?). With the additional fun of librarianwardrobe.com/ running their fashion show walkoff contest, it looks to be the best after-hours event yet.

Sunday:

5:30pm: LITA Happy Hour has moved to Sunday night, and I’m very pleased about that, because it is  one of the events that you’ll see MOST of the twitter people at all in the same place! I am particularly thrilled that it’s moved so it doesn’t interfere with ALAPlay! No conflicts, double fun.

6:30pm: Student Reception (NMRT) is also Sunday night, so if you wanna do a “networking pub crawl”, add this to the list.

7pm: Hacklibschool / Library Boing Boing Meetup

Monday:

2:45pm: Librarian Wardrobe #ala12 Conversation Starter Session. Style and Stereotypes: Perceptions of Librarians – join a panel + discussion on style and stereotypes of librarians, perceptions inside and outside of the field.

5:30pm: Battledecks 2012! If you kick-off the conference with Think Tank, end it here! Another fun fun fun event that needs to be seen to be believed. I competed 2 years ago (won the bronze medal!), judged last year, and this year just wanna chill with all my hacklibschool ppl. Let’s #makeTHAThappen! And i’m sure we’ll all find some informal locations to share our library stories with after.

Tuesday:

Recover. Sleep on your flight. Or find me & PC Sweeney and we’ll drink some mimosas before heading back to our libraries.

One last thing, Mango Languages always throws a killer party, and this year it’s at a bowling alley. You need an invite, though, so hit them up at their booth in the exhibit hall for the pass to the party!

LIBRARIANS ASSEMBLE, #partyhard, #makeithappen.

JP

To make things a lot easier, here is the ALA Annual #partyhard map. Use it well.