Expand Your Career Potential Recap

Last week SLASG hosted a viewing party for the DC/SLA Chapter webinar Expand Your Career Potential. Despite some technical difficulties on both ends, the presentation given by Deb Hunt (current SLA president) and Dave Grossman (SLA-SF chapter member), offered a lot of great advice and tips about acquiring skills to make yourself a better information professional (and one that's more desirable to hiring managers). Not everyone was able to attend our viewing party, but here are some key points from the presentations.

Basic library-related skills you gain by earning an MLS or MIS are usually required for library positions. Because you have an MLS or MIS, hiring managers expect that all applicants have those skills. To stand out in the job market, you need to highlight your skills beyond what you learned in SLIS. These skills discussed in the webinar fall into three basic categories: "beyond reference," business/management, and critical intangible skills. Some of those skill are:

• Beyond Reference skills:
• Research & analysis
• Competitive intelligence
• Results driven problem solving
• Thinking outside the box
  
• Business/Management skills:
•  Marketing & sales
• Mangement & supervisory
•  Project management
• Communications/Public speaking & presentations
• Strategic planning
  
• Critical Intangible skills:
• Effective writing
• Meeting & event planning
• Teaching users not to rely on Google, Wikipedia and other such resources

If you feel you're lacking in any of these skills or other skills you feel are important, it's never to late to strengthen or obtain them. Many of us are lucky enough to have some time left in SLIS to figure out which courses can help reenforce the skills we want to acquire. But it is important (and necessary if you've finished or are in your last semester of the program) to look outside of SLIS to gain these skills.

There are a number of strategies for acquiring or improving your skills. Here are a few suggestions from the webinar:

• Reading professional publications and online articles
• Attending webinars, there are several free ones offered through professional organizations like SLA chapters and from vendor companies. Webinars from vendors might not always be about a product you use, but you might use it someday and having a perfunctory understanding of it could give you an edge in the job market
• Taking classes, in and outside of SLIS
• Attending library and SLIS workshops
• Writing/blogging, on your own or for, I don't know, the SLASG Blog
• Networking in person and online. It's not as hard as it sounds!
• Finding a mentor or colleague to show you or tell you about the ropes
• Volunteering
• Internships. If after you start working you realize there might be another path for you, volunteering and taking internships is a way to quickly learn new skills

The important think about expanding your career potential is to not stop doing it. The information field is particularly dynamic and the importance of continuing education can't be understated. It's never too early to get your skillz on.

Member Spotlight: Alexandra Hauser

Name: Alexandra Hauser

Degree: MLS

Anticipated graduation date: May 2013

I'm originally from southeast Michigan and earned my bachelor's degree in History from Michigan State University in 2010.  I've been trying to gain a variety of experience working libraries so I hold a variety of positions within the IUB Libraries.  I'm a Library Services Team Leader at the Geosciences Library, a Student Supervisor at Media & Reserve Services in the Herman B Wells Library, and I am also an Instruction Assistant within the Teaching & Learning department at the Wells Library.  I'm also currently the Treasurer for the Special Libraries Association Student Group here at Indiana University Bloomington SLIS.

During my time at SLIS I've focused mainly on academic libraries and have only recently discovered special libraries and all that they have to offer. I'm interested in corporate libraries and the idea of really drilling down to focus on a particular market or product and providing research and information to those involved in that field. I am also particularly interested in promoting information literacy, that is providing people with the skills and training to use various information resources confidently to locate accurate, relevant, and quality information and use it effectively.

I have really enjoyed working toward my professional identity here at SLIS. I was able to start achieving this through the publication of two papers "Beyond gatekeepers of knowledge: Scholarly communication practices of academic librarians and archivists at ARL institutions", a product of my Spring 2012 Scholarly Communication class,  was accepted by College and Research Libraries in August 2012 and is awaiting publication.  "Scholarish: Google Scholar and its value for the sciences", written with my Science & Technology information class, was published in the Summer 2012 issue of Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship.  Excitingly, we were also asked to write a follow-up blog post based on Scholarish for the London School of Economics' Impact of Social Sciences blog.

I'd love to hold a position where I can continue teaching and promoting information literacy.

You can find me on LinkedIn under Alexandra Hauser or following the link here. http://www.linkedin.com/pub/alexandra-hauser/2a/490/a91

Member Spotlight: Perris King

Name: Perris King

Degree: MIS

Anticipated graduation date: May 2013

I'm from Fresno California. I'm currently doing an internship at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, working at the Support Center, and job hunting. I enjoy cooking, knitting, reading (like most Slizzards), travelling, and watching movies in my spare time.

I started in the MLS program because I was interested in going into business research, but I eventually realized I was more interested in metadata and electronic publishing. My favorite class so far has been Human Computer Interaction. The instructor (Hamid Ekbia) is great and we got to develop an app focused on improving people's behaviors, which was an interesting challenge.

I'm really enjoying my internship at the IMA and would love to have a job like that where I get to work with large image collections and creative people. I'm also interested in electronic publishing and developing electronic books.

Resume/Portfolio site: http://www.perrisking.com/

LinkedIn profile: www.linkedin.com/pub/perris-king/27/292/a56

Member Spotlight: Margaret Janz

Name: Margaret Janz

Degree: MLS, specialization in chemical information

Anticipated graduation date: May 2013

I'm originally from central Wisconsin and earned my bachelor's degree in Information Resources from the School of Information Science at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee in 2010. I work at the Life Sciences and Chemistry Libraries here at IU as a graduate assistant and at the Lilly Library as an assistant to the ALF Cataloger.

My focus at SLIS has been on science librarianship, because I'm really interested in the sciences, especially the biological ones. I also am really interested in data management and the issues surrounding open access publishing. My tendency to think outside the box made special libraries very appealing to me once I knew they existed. I really love that there are libraries everywhere and have the idealistic notion that information sharing is a key component to solving all problems.

I am really proud of a lot of the work I've done professionally and as a student at SLIS. One item of note was publishing the paper "Scholarish: Google Scholar and its value for the sciences" in the Summer 2012 issue of Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship with by my Sci&Tech Information class. I'm also very excited about collaborating with the IU Libraries' e-science librarian on a project this semester about data management practices of zoo researchers.

I'd love to work for a library at a National Park or in a zoo library.

You can connect with me on LinkedIn. That name again is Margaret Janz.

Thanks to those who were able to make it out to our No Pressure Networking event this week. We were a small group, but it was a good time! Sorry to those who couldn't be there, hopefully we'll see you at some of the things coming up. On that note, here are some of the things we talked about on Tuesday:

There are a few events taking place in Indianapolis this semester, including the Indy Librarian Tweet-Up (Feb 23 1-4pm), IUPUI Libraries and SLIS Joint Confernce (Mar 23 9:15am-12:30pm), and the ACRL Conference (Apr 10-13). These are all pretty general interest library-related events so we're hoping to set up some ride-shares with some of the other SLIS student groups. If you're interested in attending these events, let us know!

In March we're hoping to put together a Resume Spin session. Participants in this event will find a job ad or description that appeals to them and write a cover letter/resume for the position. Then we'll get some professionals in to look at what you've got and help you spin your experience and skills when applying for jobs. More information on this will be available soon!

Another couple of things to look forward to are the forthcoming Member Spotlight and Special Library Focus features of this here blog. The Member Spotlight will showcase our amazing members, giving faces to our really nice group. The Special Library Focus feature will give our members a chance to learn more about the libraries that interest them, an opportunity to have a writing sample out in the world [wide web], and let all interested parties find out what kinds of libraries are out there.

This is shaping up to be an exciting semester for us! Check back for more updates!

And we're back!

The Special Libraries Association Student Group (SLASG) here at SLIS is back!

SLASG aims to provide SLIS students with professional development, supplemental education opportunities, and general fun times by providing relevant and unique programming. We will also be offering independent project support.

The group will be off the ground this Spring, when we'll be holding an informational meeting to give you information and find out information about you and what you're into. In the meantime, please contact us if you'd like more information or if you think you'd like to join.

We're trying a new participatory membership model instead of having traditional officer roles. If you want to know more about that talk to Margaret Janz (serving as a general coordinator) or Alex Hauser (takin' care of membership dues and such). We're really nice so feel free to drop us a line if you have questions or would like to join the group. You can even talk to us if you see us around campus!

Elections Coming Soon!

Stay tuned for details on new SLA officer elections this month!
Officer positions available are:  
     President
     Vice-President
     Secretary
     Treasurer
     Social Chair
     Webmaster