June 2, 2011

Service!

Dear Fellow Slizzardians,

As a future librarian, most of us are aware of the importance of service. For those of you who may be less familiar, as an academic librarian (and in some other areas of library science) you are expected to participate in service at many levels: community (both school and location), state, national, and international. Service is one of the ways librarians are evaluated professionally.

One way to begin your service journey is to first join a student organization (the SLA-SG is always an excellent choice). Another way to at least get familiar with an organization is through its listserv. Librarians are big fans of things like social media, blogs, and listservs because it is the easiest way to communicate. Figure out what types of librarianship you may be interested, whether it is community colleges or archives or any other area, investigate the organization's parent/national website, and join its listserv. Most listservs do not require you to be a paying member, and it will give you an idea of what people in that field are frequently working on or discussing. Sometimes, you may even find out about jobs!

Another great advantage of listservs is that you can find out about workshops and conferences. I recently attended a workshop on the Care and Identification of Photographs (Gawain Weaver) and I learned a ton. I also had the opportunity to meet/network with other librarians in a field I was interested in on a much more intimate level than if it had been a conference.

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