{"id":82765,"date":"2014-10-15T08:00:53","date_gmt":"2014-10-15T13:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/?p=82765"},"modified":"2014-10-14T21:06:52","modified_gmt":"2014-10-15T02:06:52","slug":"keeping-your-library-skills-cultivated-outside-of-the-library","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/?p=82765","title":{"rendered":"Keeping your library skills cultivated outside of the library"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Clayton Hayes, Senior Assistant, INALJ North Dakota<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Keeping your library skills cultivated outside of the library<\/span><\/h3>\n

\"clayton.hayes\"<\/a>The job search can be a long and drawn-out process, and for many it begins as soon as they\u00a0settle into a new position. A large part of the job search process is identifying and maintaining\u00a0important professional skills. For many of us, though, our current positions may not be the exact\u00a0position we\u2019d like to be in. It may be close and there may be some overlap, but it is not perfect.\u00a0The security of having a position is, of course, more important than waiting around for the\u00a0perfect job. What is to be done, then, when developing and maintaining professional skills for\u00a0that perfect job is so important?<\/p>\n

There are some obvious options, such as training sessions or courses offered both online and in\u00a0person. Subscribing to relevant listservs, blogs, and newsletters can also keep you up-to-date on\u00a0new developments and opportunities in the profession. There will always be volunteer positions,\u00a0true, but all the skills in the world aren\u2019t going to help you if you don\u2019t have any job at all. In the\u00a0end, nothing quite compares to hands-on professional experience.<\/p>\n

One of the great things about being a librarian is that your skill set can be applied pretty widely.\u00a0It therefore stands to reason that it should be possible to make connections between jobs in other\u00a0professions and library-related ones. As I mentioned above, the perfect position doesn\u2019t come\u00a0around every day. Sometimes it can be hard to find a not-so-perfect position, in fact. As a result,\u00a0many librarians are going to spend some time working in positions outside of the field. That does\u00a0not mean that they can\u2019t cultivate their librarian skills in those positions, however.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s look at a few examples:<\/p>\n

Customer services positions, some of the most common positions available, afford a lot of\u00a0opportunities to develop library-related skills. Aside from the obvious (dealing with the public in\u00a0a professional context), many such positions allow you to practice your reference interviewing\u00a0skills on a fairly regular basis. Each time a customer or patron asks you a question, no matter\u00a0how simple, you always have the opportunity to reflect on the interaction and critically analyze\u00a0the part that you played in the process. Similarly, phone calls are great opportunities to practice\u00a0your virtual reference skills.<\/p>\n

Technology is another area in which there may be significant overlap between a non-library\u00a0position and the library position of your dreams. Obviously, library-specific software may be\u00a0hard to come by outside of the profession, but there are many different types of software that\u00a0are used in many different types of positions. Identifying which technologies in your current\u00a0position are likely to be employed in the library field, or which feature similar skills and thought\u00a0processes, can go a long way in keeping your technological expertise from getting rusty.<\/p>\n

The point being that these sorts of opportunities are out there. It is not hard to imagine working\u00a0in a non-library job for a spell while open library positions are a bit thin on the ground. Taking\u00a0a non-library position doesn\u2019t mean you can\u2019t cultivate library-centric skills, though. No one is\u00a0going to force you to make connections between your position and potential library positions.\u00a0No one is going to spell those connections out for you. Like so much else in the world of\u00a0librarianship, it\u2019s just something you need to keep up on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Clayton Hayes, Senior Assistant, INALJ North Dakota Keeping your library skills cultivated outside of the library The job search can be a long and drawn-out process, and for many it begins as soon as they\u00a0settle into a new position. A large part of the job search process is identifying and maintaining\u00a0important professional skills. For…<\/p>\n

Read more \u2192<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":60423,"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":[146,69,3592,5898,3662,3860,266,6503,4340,5990],"class_list":["post-82765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","tag-advice","tag-article","tag-blog","tag-clayton-hayes","tag-inalj-north-dakota","tag-job-hunt","tag-job-search","tag-job-search-advice","tag-job-searching","tag-staying-relevant-outside-the-profession"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/clayton.hayes_.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1WoMK-lwV","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82765","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=82765"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82765\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/60423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=82765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=82765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=82765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}