by Naomi House, MLIS

Free Advice (Literally) for New Librarians

INALJ along with many other jobs blogs out there, is full of great advice for new and transitioning professionals.

Go to conferences! Tailor your resumés and cover letters each time! Take professional development classes!  Network!  Join associations!  Actively participate IN associations!  Volunteer!  Take on an internship! 

This is really great advice with a HUGE caveat- every single thing you seem to read about how LIS pros (librarians, staff, etc) can advance their careers has a significant cost associated with it whether it is in dollars or in time or both.  Unpaid internships require time and offer no monetary reward for work given that should and is paid to others, for example.  Everything has a cost.  So lets start with what inspired me to write this post, two tweets that came across my feed.

Credentialism Yep- both of these apply to our field.  When I started in libraries ten years ago as staff I had no problem finding jobs.  I was offered 5 jobs when I relocated from Ithaca, NY to Washington, DC in mid-2007.  Shortly after that the economy dropped and the jobs dried up.  They were already well off the peak and growth in our field is slower than average.  Every type of library saw funding slashed if they even remained open at all and staff were made to do more with less (I hate this term, btw) or lost their jobs.  As Sarah Kendzior, a writer on politics, economy, media and columnist for @AJEnglish, points out credentialism and the debt just from the degree is already a very heavy burden for recent grads in a down economy, and most professional librarian positions require at least one Master’s degree.  And this isn’t going to change. I do want to add that LIS programs often have some fantastic faculty and I was very lucky to have the professors I did at Rutgers SCI. High Cost This post was initially inspired by Chris Magnifico‘s tweet above about the economics of the advice given to new grads and transitioning professionals.  While at INALJ.com we strive to offer articles on free and low cost tools and services, we also offer plenty of good but ultimately expensive advice.  I am not attending my absolute favorite conference this year, SLA in Vancouver, because I did not have the funds.  If I had the funds I would be going, but for many local conferences are all they can ever afford.  Lets face it we are often grossly underpaid in our field for a group with MLS/MLIS degrees.  Conferences do have great value, but also have high costs for many.  Professional development costs money, too.  Associations have discounted rates for the unemployed but there is a cost involved.  Other advice often given requires many hours of your time and many people have other commitments and cannot give more.  They also resent being required after paying for a degree and getting experience feeling obligated to give their time away for free. FREE Advice So what can we do to help ourselves develop and become recognized in our field that has zero cost at all?  Nothing– there will always be a time component that has to go into any professional development.  We just have to assess what is reasonable with out schedules.  However, each of the following suggestions has a cost of $0 and are all online, so they do not require you to go anywhere.

• TWITTER:  Twitter has been hugely influential in my career beyond INALJ (sadly @INALJ was taken so we were @needalibraryjob but as of 2015 we are now @INALJNaomi) and has exposed me to many people I consider leaders in our field who may not be the speakers at conferences we see time and again.  You do not have to spend very long daily or weekly to get a lot out of the conversations being had on Twitter.
• TWEETCHATS:  One aspect of Twitter I have been using more recently is the chance to participate in Tweetchats.  Usually they are weekly or monthly and 1-1.5 hours each.  I was inspired by #libchat, #slatalk and #uklibchat to start #inaljchat Mondays at 9pm ET to crowdsource with followers topics related to job hunting and LIS.
• MOOCs and FREE ONLINE CLASSES:  Truth: I have signed up for 3 MOOCs in the past and never finished even one.  MOOCs are often taught by professors and affiliated with a university.  You can also use free lessons at Khan Academy, for example.
• LINKEDIN:  I transitioned from using a Facebook group as my main conversation space to LinkedIn because private LinkedIn groups cannot be crawled by search engines.  I had someone write me that a question they asked on Facebook was found by Google search results and they were upset that potential employers could see it.
• VIRTUAL CONFERENCES and FREE EVENTS:  There are many free online events you can attend and present at (once again that time in component) such as the Library Worldwide Virtual 2.014 held in October.  Another fantastic resource that I link to on the INALJ.com sidebar is Sarah Deringer’s (a librarian who has in the past been an INALJ volunteer) Calendar of Free Online Webinars.  Bookmark it!
• FACEBOOK:  There are many Facebook groups where you can discuss the field and interact with librarians.  ALA Think Tank, unaffiliated with ALA, is the most popular one but INALJ has one too.  Most of our conversations take place on Twitter and LinkedIn, however.
• TUMBLR: The Tumblarian community is very active and works together well.  For example they consistently use the same tag, Library, so that they are linked together and found easier.  The most popular Tumblarian by far and creator of the list I linked to is The Lifeguard Librarian.
• LISTSERVS:  Listservs are great but usually attached to an association or university, so membership has a cost.  This may be seen as a perk of the cost you already spent.  Listservs vary greatly from the super helpful to the very inappropriate so lurk first.
• OTHER SOCIAL MEDIA/SHARING:  Reddit, GitHub, Pinterest and more!  There are tons of specialty, especially tech communities to explore online.  I have found that even when I have lived away from a thriving library community I could always find communities online to learn from and interact with.  You can build your reputation just like on Twitter, FB and Tumblr and make a name for yourself across the field without ever leaving home or even meeting the people you interact with.
• STANDARD RESUME and COVER LETTER TEMPLATES: We hear this constantly that every resumé and cover letter needs to be tailored to the position.  But you can save time by creating a template to work off of.  Most of my cover letters have very similar structures and not much difference in the first and last paragraph from letter to letter.  For my resumé I made a master one with every single possible thing I may want to put on there then instead of adding to it each time I prune it.
• Blogs:  Make one or follow some fantastic librarians who blog as well.  Both take a lot of time but at least there is no publication lag time so the ideas and conversations are often very current and relevant.  I found most of the ones I read daily through Twitter and I list some of my daily reads at the very bottom of all pages on INALJ.com.  If you want to make a blog and you want to develop followers you need to be consistent and for no cost there are many platforms such as WordPress and Blogger.  Whenever I talk to someone I respect like a colleague, professor or just someone I ask a question of on social media my go to question is “who should I be following/reading?”
• DAILY ADVOCACY:  Having a taxi speech or elevator speech at the ready can help both you and the non-LIS listener.  I know corporate libraries have been shrinking or being shuttered so these mini-advocacy sessions can expose potential employers to our value.  It may also lead to a job, though this is not very common.  At the very least you have changed someone’s attitude towards what we do and our value, hopefully.

These are just a start.  Please use the comments to offer other constructive and no cost solutions! * I contacted all three people mentioned in the tweets for their permission to use the screenshots in advance and was given permission.  Permission does not = endorsement. 🙂