Guest Blogger: Networking For Fun (And a Job!)

networking = chatting with interesting people!

 

(Today’s Guest Blogger is Dorice Moylan, Reference & Instruction Librarian at the Frederick S. Pardee Management Library, Boston University Questrom School of Business)

Networking is necessary, not just at the start of your career, but throughout it. There are many levels but it can be as easy as being yourself.

When it comes to your job search, whether your first professional position after library school, or any search after that, networking is an important aspect. Visions of large hotel function rooms with eager faces and stacks of business cards come to mind, from networking sessions that I attended years ago when starting my personal training business. This environment isn’t ideal for many people, and can be pretty unproductive when the only thing in common between attendees is that everyone is starting their own small business of some type.

Let’s Get Together! A very brief survey

In response to member requests, CMLE is going to set up a regular monthly gathering. This will be an opportunity for members from all types of library and from across the system to get together casually, to chat, to have lunch or dinner, and to just get a chance to talk to each other in person. (And if you want to talk about non-library things, that’s fine too! This is your chance to just hang out with library colleagues; so discuss whatever you want!)

Click to tell us what time (lunch/dinner) and day (Monday – Friday) would work best for you.

We anticipate these will happen monthly, and will create a schedule for the first six months of 2017 to share with you.

While you can not know your schedule in detail for the next six months, we ask that you make some predictions about days and times that you think you would be most likely to be able to join colleagues for an hour or two. We will move the location around, so people from across the system can all have a chance at a shorter drive!

Pick your day and time below. And if you have suggestions on some public places to meet – think coffee, food, possibly adult beverages, and space for us to spread out – leave them below, or email them to us at admin@cmle.org!

 

If you didn’t already click: here it is again!

CMLE Google Groups: A place to talk shop with your colleagues!

Let’s discuss library things!

One of the main things we hear from our members is that they work alone, and that they feel alone in a lot of the things they do in their libraries. As we found in the needs assessment, most of you are solos or working in a library with fewer than five people. And it can be tough to be alone!

At CMLE Headquarters, we want to help you connect to your colleagues. Having someone else to talk about ideas with you, to share in the issues you are all facing, and to ask questions from someone else who knows about the situations you are in can be really helpful!

So we have established a variety of online forums for you to talk, to share ideas, and to celebrate the assorted successes you have in your library! Need to ask for book recommendations? Do it here! Want an example of a useful lesson plan? Ask here! Have a charming story of an adorable patron? Share it here!

Let’s talk! CMLE Google Groups, and more

Orville likes to talk about libraries and library issues!

As we travel around to visit and talk with library people all around the system, we ask everyone what we can do to the help them get their work done. Our jobs are to make your jobs easier, and to help us all work together more effectively. And the one thing we consistently hear is that everyone wants to connect more easily and more frequently with their colleagues in other libraries.

As a system, working to connect everyone together, we want that too! So we are working out some strategies for helping you to get connected in a way that works for you.

One strategy is to set up a variety of Google Groups for you to join as you wish. You can post discussions, ask questions, share material, and set up chatting and Hangouts. So far, we have groups set up for all kinds of different organizations, and you can join any of them. We will be adding groups based on topics you might want to discuss on a regular basis (copyright, information literacy, planning, etc.), but Google takes a while before they let us set up more groups.

So we can dive in here and get started with sharing! While we don’t anticipate everyone will contribute huge amounts of discussion (though, of course that is fine too), we want to start having places where you can chat with each other, ask questions, and generally consult with your colleagues outside your library!

Note: although we envision these as being part of the strategy to connect CMLE libraries, if you are a library person outside of our system it is fine to join and discuss your library topics here. We want to build a community of library people!

Get in the game: Join an ALA committee!

It is always great to have a voice in the profession, to get to know other interesting library people, and to share your experience with others. You can do all of this by joining an ALA committee! I volunteered today, and I’m looking forward to seeing some of you there too! The information from ALA is below, for each perusal.  The next annual meeting will be in Chicago, and we can get a CMLE van trip organized to transport people! Of course, also consider joining your local library groups, state groups, groups that focus on your specific professional interests – no matter what you do in the library world, there is a group for you!!

Contact:

Kerri Price

Executive Board Secretariat

Governance

American Library Association

312-280-3203

kprice@ala.org

CHICAGO — The online committee volunteer form (http://www.ala.org/CFApps/volunteer/form.cfm – select “ALA” in the drop-down menu) for ALA, Council and two joint committees closes on Friday, Nov. 4, 2016. Please complete the form if you wish to be considered for appointment (or reappointment).