{"id":80524,"date":"2014-09-05T08:00:21","date_gmt":"2014-09-05T13:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/?p=80524"},"modified":"2014-09-05T08:16:26","modified_gmt":"2014-09-05T13:16:26","slug":"volunteer-to-boost-your-career","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/?p=80524","title":{"rendered":"Volunteer to Boost Your Career"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Christina Wilson, Senior Assistant,\u00a0INALJ Alberta<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0INALJ Manitoba<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Volunteer to Boost Your Career<\/span><\/h3>\n

\"ChristinaWilson\"<\/a>Although I\u2019ve worked full time in my field as a library and information professional since\u00a0graduating from library school, I\u2019ve always found time to volunteer as well. While I enjoy\u00a0contributing to my community, volunteering has helped me gain valuable experience and\u00a0learning opportunities that were directly relevant to my career development. Some of my most\u00a0rewarding volunteer activities, both personally and professionally, have occurred in the library\u00a0and information field.<\/p>\n

While working in the information technology field in a new city, I volunteered at my local public\u00a0library delivering materials to homebound clients.<\/strong> Personally rewarding, this experience helped\u00a0me learn more about the library\u2019s collection. My readers helped direct me to new authors I\u2019d\u00a0never have thought of before. I was living in a new city and met some amazing people, both\u00a0library staff and my homebound clients, through this volunteer experience. I learned so much\u00a0about my new community through their eyes. I also learned about the public library\u2019s culture,\u00a0from the perspective of a volunteer, valued by the staff and appreciated by the organization.\u00a0I learned that other library staff enjoyed spending their free time delivering materials to\u00a0homebound readers, too! Both at that library and the one where I currently work several staff\u00a0volunteer delivering materials to homebound readers. There may be many reasons for this,\u00a0but I suspect, like me, my co-workers enjoy sharing of their skills, experience and knowledge,\u00a0whether the activity is paid or volunteer. In addition, we are motivated by the desire to enable\u00a0people to keep reading. This is an important cause and we are rewarded by our shared interest\u00a0in reading and in getting to know our clients.<\/p>\n

Early in my career, I volunteered as a conference planner for the Ontario Library Association\u00a0(OLA).<\/strong> This experience was instrumental in helping develop a solid professional network that\u00a0has helped me get a great start to my career. Being involved in a conference as a planner\u00a0was also a great item to include on my resume. The experience was as valuable as attending\u00a0any course or conference in learning about the variety of issues facing Ontario\u2019s libraries and\u00a0how they were being met, which greatly assisted me in my position at the time. I was able to\u00a0practice and hone skills such as project management (session planning, event planning), team\u00a0building (committee work) and communication skills (proofing programs, session forms and\u00a0other communiques). This experience achieved several career boosting goals such as skills\u00a0development, relevant work experience, self-learning, meeting new people who shared similar\u00a0interests, assisted a cause (libraries) that was very important to me and improved my self-\u00a0esteem. This key volunteer activity enabled me to learn more about the scope of the library\u00a0and information profession and to develop for myself what my role in it could be.<\/p>\n

The library and information profession field offers many volunteer opportunities that can be\u00a0career boosting but personally satisfying as well.<\/strong> If you lack Board experience, you may wish to\u00a0gain some by volunteering to join a local public library Board or the Board of your local library\u00a0Association. I participated in the latter at another stage of my career and know several library\u00a0professionals who contribute their time to area Library Boards. They find it helpful in honing\u00a0their committee work, but also to allow them to experience library governance, as a way to\u00a0prepare them for future career choices. I\u2019m sure that my previous volunteer Board experience\u00a0was helpful in being shortlisted for my current position as a public library CEO.<\/p>\n

My current volunteer gig is as a Senior Assistant, for the Alberta and Manitoba pages of INALJ. I became involved so that I could try something new, participate in\u00a0an online, professional community and write a regular blog posting on career related topics.\u00a0The cause of helping others in my field become gainfully and happily employed is important\u00a0to me as a library professional and employer. I want the best people to be seeing the best\u00a0opportunities. I\u2019ve \u201cmet\u201d some stellar professionals via this online community and we\u2019ve\u00a0shared many interests. Volunteering for INALJ has taught me about time management,\u00a0WordPress and how hard it is to write regularly and freshly. For all these reasons, I find INALJ\u00a0to be personally rewarding as a volunteer activity. For those of you beginning your career, it\u00a0could be just the volunteer experience that adds value to your resume and further boosts your\u00a0career.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Christina Wilson, Senior Assistant,\u00a0INALJ Alberta\u00a0and\u00a0INALJ Manitoba Volunteer to Boost Your Career Although I\u2019ve worked full time in my field as a library and information professional since\u00a0graduating from library school, I\u2019ve always found time to volunteer as well. While I enjoy\u00a0contributing to my community, volunteering has helped me gain valuable experience and\u00a0learning opportunities that were…<\/p>\n

Read more \u2192<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":65306,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[145],"tags":[69,3592,6143,3974,3666,5888,6107,4252,410],"class_list":["post-80524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","tag-article","tag-blog","tag-career-advancement","tag-christina-wilson","tag-inalj-alberta","tag-inalj-manitoba","tag-pros-of-volunteering","tag-volunteer","tag-volunteering"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/ChristinaWilson.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1WoMK-kWM","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=80524"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80524\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/65306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=80524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=80524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=80524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}