Sandra Herber: Future Librarian

I went to the OLA Superconference this past week for the full Wednesday evening to Saturday morning run.  It was not only my first time at that conference, but my first time at any library conference and I had a fantastic time.  I saw some great sessions, heard about some very exciting things that academic librarians are doing and met some very interesting people.  Here’s my advice for anyone going to the conference for the first time next year.

The Living Library

This was a seriously underappreciated event.  It was a chance to ‘check out’ a human book from the Career Centre for a half an hour.  This was you could talk to a library CEO, an academic librarian or a children’s librarian and ask them anything about their careers or current jobs.  I was lucky enough to ‘check out’ Jane Dysart (of Dysart and Jones consulting), Kim Silk (the Data Librarian at Martin Prosperity Institute, Rotman School at the University of Toronto) and Amanda (our fearless leader).  They were all incredibly open about their careers and about prospects in academic and special libraries.

Networking

This sort of segues from the previous paragraph: the conference is a great place to get to know librarians in an area that interests you.  Most of us are either a bit sceptical or a bit nervous (or both) about the idea of networking.  If you fit into this category you should go to one of the opening events: The Art of Networking (Wednesday evening).  It’s a nice, gentle way to get started talking to new people at the conference and the OLA Board of Directors is in attendance, so you can meet them, too.  As for the rest of the conference, I found everyone to be very friendly and receptive to someone just about to graduate with their MLIS.  It made ‘networking’ almost painless.  The “Meet the Employer” session on Saturday morning was also a great chance to talk to librarians and human resource professionals from a number of academic and public libraries.

The Zen of Picking Sessions

In a conference with 251 different sessions, you will really be spoiled for choice.  Even by being ruthless I found that in most time slots I had 3 sessions I wanted to go to.  When I finally made my decision, I’d worry that there was a better session somewhere else that I was missing.  My solution: stay put and get as much as I could out of the session I chose.  Maybe this is more about life than about the Superconference, but there is something to be learned in every one of these sessions and if you try to do everything, you are sure to miss it.

The Library Routes Project is a wiki that should be of interest to most of us in library school.  It contains links to people who have blogged about “their library roots (how they got into the profession) and their library routes (the jobs they’ve had and how their career has been shaped)”.    So – it’s not only interesting because it demystifies how librarians got to where they are, but it may also introduce you to bloggers that you would like to follow.