Career Growth for Librarians: Tips on Finding Your Professional Community

Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us for today’s webinar with Lauren Hays. My name is Bradley, and I will be your moderator for this webinar titled career growth for librarians, tips on finding your professional community.

Before we start, I would like to provide some information about our company and introduce today’s presenter. Lucidea is a software developing company specialized in museum and archival collections management solutions, as well as knowledge management and library automation systems. Our brands include ArchivEra, Argus, Presto, and SydneyDigital.

Now I would like to take a moment to introduce today’s presenter. Lauren Hays is an associate professor of instructional technology at the University of Central Missouri. Previously, worked as an instructional and research librarian at a private college in the Kansas City metro area. And prior to working in higher education, she was employed by the National Archives and Records Administration and worked as an intern at the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum. Her professional interests include the scholarship of teaching and learning, information literacy, digital literacy, educational technology, and academic development. Take it away, Lauren.

Thank you, Brad. Thank you for that introduction. I am looking forward to sharing with you about finding your professional community.

Our goals for this session are to see the value of having a professional community, to identify ways that you can grow your career through networking, and to plan ways to expand your professional community.

I wanna start by just sharing a bit about my personal story of, coming around to this idea that networking and, having a professional community, was really important. And I will say that probably my first realization of it happened when I was in college in my undergraduate experience, and I was interviewing for a that internship at the Harry s Truman Presidential Library and Museum. And I remember as I was going through the interview process and even well, I guess, really even before I started the interview process, there were discussions, that I should apply that the my adviser had had somebody placed there previously, and they thought it would be a really good opportunity.

And so just that having that connection and personal insight into what that role would look like was really helpful for me in preparing for the interview, having a bit of that kind of personal knowledge that my adviser had from a previous student of his working there. And that kind of started my thought process of, oh, it’s really helpful to just sometimes have an inside view or a different perspective on something than you would get without a network of people involved.

That said, I fully admit that I have been unsure about the networking process throughout my career. And I have talked about this in various blog posts I have written for Lucidea over the years that I would certainly describe myself as an introvert. My favorite times are when I can sit quietly, maybe drink some coffee, read a book, maybe have some one on one conversations.

But, large groups, have never been my favorite thing.

That said, I have certainly come around to the perspective that the kind of maybe more traditional view of networking with a lot of large groups, a lot of situations that might make it introvert to a little bit more uncomfortable do not have to be the way that networking is done. Instead, it can be a lot of one on one conversations, times where you’re just meeting for coffee, you’re learning about their work, they’re asking you questions. And instead, I’ve really kind of reframed it as more exploratory. And what I mean by that is, I like to just ask questions. I’m curious about things. I think that’s something that a lot of librarians can relate to.

We have kind of some sort of ingrained curiosity about the world in us. And when we can engage in networking through that lens of curiosity, I think we can approach it in a way that might make us, at least it has made me less uncomfortable. Because, I never, in addition to the just natural feelings of introversion, I never want to feel like I’m using people as a stepping stone for something. And so, again, when I can approach it with I’m willing to ask questions, they’re they can ask questions of me, and we can make it a mutually beneficial learning experience for each other, I think that value, is really emphasized where I’m always willing to hopefully take the time for somebody else and help somebody maybe earlier in their career now that I am a bit more established in my career.

And just because I’ve had those roles, models, and mentors in my own life.

So again, thinking about it in a bit of a different way than I maybe did when I first started as early librarian.

The other piece to this that you might be hearing me talk about is just the time that it can take to engage in a professional community. I emphasize this on the screen that it really does sometimes feel like work, but worthwhile work.

And what I mean by that is that it certainly takes time out of, you know, my day, my week to attend events in person. It’s certainly not something I do every week, by any stretch.

But, you know, if I’m thinking kind of strategically, maybe trying once a month to, you know, attend something that’s related to professional work that is outside of the standard day to day operations that I am engaged in. And so that can be a goal or it could be, you know, once every quarter or once every six months. It’s whatever it looks like for you, but it is work and does take thought to kind of strategically plan when you’re going to find the time to invest in a professional community. Even if it’s just sending an email, it takes time to stop, set down, write that email To start building more connections. So I want you as we’re thinking through the rest of this to think about even if you’re unsure about networking, that there is a lot of value in it and that it also is work. So those would be kind of the three pieces that that I would hope you would have Kind of uses a lens as we work through the rest of this session.

So let’s talk a little bit more about the value of a professional community. So I have found that it has really provided a lot of support for me as I have thought about different projects I might want to take on or different positions I might want to move into.

There it just it’s nice having somebody another person to kind of bounce ideas off of and who understands the roles that I’m working in.

I’ve but probably the most important part for me of the professional community has really been around collaboration. And what I mean by that is people that I have met, whether that is academic conferences or Even on social media, just seeing what they’re posting and then maybe making, an email introduction, say, oh, we have similar interests. I’d be curious to have a conversation with you. And then maybe a Zoom meeting is set up.

What has come of those conversations has been some of the most collaborative work, which has been some of my favorite work that I have done, throughout my career up to this point. Whether, there’s some book projects that have come from collaboration and those initial conference discussions. There have been webinar series that I haven’t had the chance to participate in. There’s classes I’ve taught.

There’s just a lot of work that I wouldn’t have been able to do if I wasn’t willing to make the effort to go and talk to other people, that were gonna be outside of my direct community involved in my job.

So as you’re thinking about collaboration and projects, I would just encourage you to think, what would you maybe like to do? What interests do you have? Are there other people who have similar interests? And might you want to reach out to them to discuss a potential collaboration?

Then for career growth and career moves, as you saw and heard, in my brief bio, I have not worked at the same job throughout my entire career. I have not made a lot of moves.

The app but at the same time, I’ve certainly moved into different roles, throughout the time that I have been working. And, most of those have been because of a collaboration that I’ve worked on or something that that kind of sparked my interest.

And then I thought, oh, I think after discovering whatever this is, discovering technology more, for example, I realized I really wanted to move my career more in that direction. And, so I’ve been able to do that by having discussions and support related to different topics.

And then finally, professional community also is really important, I believe, for just providing encouragement. There will be likely times in your career that are not going to be as, I can use the word fun or motivating as other times that there might be things that lead to discouragement.

And having people that you can talk to about what is happening and maybe help you brainstorm different ways to deal with some of the issues that are occurring can just be a really positive experience. And I would encourage you to have, you know, those people, but also be that person for others.

And then it can also personal community can lead to innovation. New ways of thinking about, you know, a solution to a problem.

It can lead to new ideas to grow research in a particular area or innovation with working with a particular product or kind of way of conducting, you know, work at your institution. Maybe it leads to some new workshops or new workflow that you hadn’t considered before or a new way of engaging with stakeholders. All that can come from just kind of having someone to brainstorm and encourage you to think about something that you’re going through in a new way.

So where to find community?

I wrote a post earlier this year about the Kind of The SLA was no longer going to be an organization, a standalone organization.

It’s now merging with another professional organization.

There’s more on that on the Lucidia blog that you can read about. So that kind of is sort of where this came from. When maybe your professional organization doesn’t exist in the same way that it used to.

What are other ways that you can find community?

Because while those, you know, standard professional organizations are extremely important and have been extremely important in my career, for finding that community, there are other ways of approaching it too that I would like you to consider. So one is just meetups. And you can go online to kinda like an event space and see various meetups that are happening in the area that it could be a lot of times they’re topic related, so you can find people who have similar interests as you, but they can also be meetups can also be associated with a larger association, maybe like a local chapter of a larger association. And you can think about different associations that are maybe similarly aligned to what you do even if it isn’t exactly aligned to what you do. So for example, you know, most of my work is around libraries, education, but there is a a local local association that is more in like the learning and development field.

And but a lot of their work overlaps and is related to work that I’m doing. And they frequently have meet ups. And that is a great place to, for me, to meet people and talk to them about things that are related to what I’m doing, though maybe not directly, like, the same, but sometimes that different perspective on what I’m doing has been very useful for me. It was because they approach it from a slightly different perspective with the work that they do.

So think about that. Don’t try to make me if you can’t find a meetup that’s exactly in line with your professional goals or your professional organization, just be creative and think about going to a meetup that is More tangentially related to it, I guess, is what I’m trying to say there. So then also look at various different library associations. There are, you know, international groups, there’s national, there’s state.

And so make sure you’re aware of what those different groups are. And then look for local chapters if, you know, getting to the national or international conference isn’t feasible for you. If it is, certainly try to attend those.

But, again, think about the different associations that are in the broader library field to consider where there might be a special interest group, you know, within those associations that might be more directly aligned with what you’re doing in your particular role.

Also, think about professional development organizations. So while these are not specifically related to maybe the library field, they are related to just professional development growth more broadly. And those groups can bring together many different people who are looking to grow their skills, whether those are soft skills, whether those are technical skills.

You can find individuals who maybe work in different types of positions than you, but have similar goals of growing professionally and gaining new skills. I would definitely encourage looking at professional development associations and then industry specific organizations.

So if, you know, you work in a special library, you know, it’s a law library or a medical library or a library associated with, you know, insurance. Whatever that might be, look to those industry specific organizations, law, medicine, insurance, and see again if there are special interest groups within those industry specific organizations that might be related to library or information management, knowledge management that could be a good fit for you to grow your professional community?

I do really think there is a lot of value in meeting your community face to face.

I certainly enjoy being able to meet on Zoom, you know, be able to send emails be at my desk, but there’s still a lot of value and there always will be in meeting in person. So when you can go to things in person, you know And obviously, we have we all have different abilities on be able to make those in person meetings. But try to go to them, but also don’t discount the value of an online community if an in person event is not feasible at this time for you. So online communities can be very beneficial. They can you can meet some people, just in different ways that that you wouldn’t think of.

So for example, one of the examples that I often like to share is that one of my mentors, we met many years ago on Twitter.

And we were engaged in a Twitter conversation at the time when those were still more robust. And they we realized we had some very similar interests because we were responding in this chat kind of from a similar perspective. And so we took that conversation to an email exchange, and then we were able to have a, you know, virtual meeting and have just kept in contact over the years. There have been opportunities where we’ve been able to meet in person, at conferences, and have done some work. But for the most part, we’ve only probably met, I wanna say three or four times in person and the rest of our communication has all been Virtual.

Whether that is through email or virtual Zoom meetings. And so we communicate pretty regularly though, and it’s just been a really kind of valuable relationship for me. So I encourage you to be willing to find communities online, you know, whether that’s through the professional organization. They might have, you know, a professional message board that you can look at and see if there’s others who are interested in the same things you are or who might have ideas for you to grow in a particular area, that can be a good way of approaching that. Even with LinkedIn, I found that lately I’ve been spending more time on LinkedIn following people who you know, share resources that are of interest to me and help me stay current on topics that are important for my role. And that has led to some communications, about jobs and just what we’re trying to do in our particular field.

And then also think about community organizations. This is similar to what I was saying about professional development associations. That community organizations are not necessarily going to be related to the particular job that you hold, but maybe a wonderful way of just meeting individuals in your broader community that have Interests in things that you’re interested in, whether that is just, you know, community service, education, different types of philanthropy, etcetera. The list could go on and on. But again, that can just be a way of growing your community and just sometimes just meeting people and learning about them, learning about what they do, growing that professional community.

Can just be really valuable for helping you.

Approach something from a different perspective, and can also just have be a really great way of just keeping your skills fresh and keeping you current on what’s happening more broadly. Again, not necessarily even related to your job, but just a specific skills. I, for example, I find it really helpful to have conversations with people who work in very different roles, and but hear about what they’re doing with artificial intelligence, because that knowledge and that information that I hear from them can really help inform ways that I want to use artificial intelligence or help me think about it in a different way than I was thinking about it before.

So again, it used to be a really great way of staying current. And of course, you can be sharing your knowledge and expertise in all of these spaces as well.

So here are just kind of some practical tips as you’re thinking about those different areas where you might want to get involved and what that would, kind of look like in a practical sense. So, first, just participate. You know, attend events, whether that is virtual or in person. Find ways that you can volunteer. You can always start small. You can, you volunteer to, you know, send an email or provide resources or set up a checklist or whatever it is that might need to be done with from an organization.

You know, find a role because that does really help you get more connected with people more quickly.

And then, you know, in the same vein, meet people. Be willing to go to the events, approach somebody, ask them about the work that they do, share the work that you do, share your interests, ask them about their interests, you know, certainly, just be curious. Then send an email and ask for the meeting. This can I sometimes feel uncomfortable doing because I never want to be a bother?

But They’re just going to say no or maybe not respond at all if it doesn’t fit with their time frame or they just don’t feel comfortable having a conversation about whatever it is I’m approaching them about.

And that’s okay. And, you know, there have certainly been times where somebody has emailed me with a question and I maybe don’t have a good response, or it just doesn’t fit in the time frame that I have available at the moment.

And then but I do try to respond always to those emails.

But But just, I guess, just try. I would with what I would encourage you to do is if there’s something that you want to know more about or somebody that’s doing really good work.

That you would like to learn about, send the email, ask about the work.

And then stay connected. And this kind of goes back to what I was saying about building a professional community is work.

What I mean by that in relation to stay connected is that it takes an effort to keep those relationships current and fresh and not just kind of falling off because it just takes an intentional effort where you’re continually showing up at the events. People see you. You’re continuing to ask questions. You’re continuing to volunteer.

And sometimes this can feel overwhelming, and that is not my intention at all. Just to add more things to someone’s already full plate. But I would encourage you to think about the importance of that professional community and where you can prioritize it and potentially think about something else that could not be as important that you could deprioritize and take off your plate.

So again, just think about just priorities and where you’re needing to make changes and then find, as much of a balance there as possible.

And then also as you get to know people, and learn about what their interests are, find ways to, collaborate, you know, especially as you’re hearing if there is interest in a particular topic that you’re interested in, suggest collaborating. Maybe you don’t have an exact idea of what that collaboration could look like.

But by just saying, it would be great if we could collaborate on something since we both have an interest in it, that could lead to a discussion of that could potentially lead to a concrete idea for collaboration, or it might just lead to the other person saying, that’s a great idea. Let’s, you know, think on it. And then they might see something come across their, you know, email or social media feed that would be a good fit for collaboration, like a conference presentation, something that, you know, fellowship that you could apply for, something like that, that and then you’ve already had that initial conversation about collaborating, and then they reach back out to you and say, just found this idea.

Let’s try it together.

And and you would, of course, do the same if you see anything that comes across at your kind of radar. You could then reach back out to them about collaborating.

So sometimes it’s just having that initial conversation, letting others know that you’re interested in working on something together that can lead to work even if it’s six months or a year later.

And then always be willing to offer your expertise. And I mentioned this a bit earlier when I was talking about now that I’m more at the middle stage of my career, looking to, you know, support those who are newer in their career.

And I just, you know, try to be humble with my expertise, of course. There’s certainly a lot more I can learn about anything in life and everything in life. But, you know, where you have some expertise, be willing to share that with others and, be willing to use that expertise, maybe particularly in where you decide you want to volunteer. You know, I think that’s an important part about volunteering is, volunteering for things that align with your skill set so that they so that the volunteer work doesn’t feel quite as burdensome for you.

I mentioned on a previous slide about, you know, sending the email and, going ahead and asking for the meeting. And so I want to just share a few tips for this because this sometimes can be a challenging thing to do. One nice thing about artificial intelligence is that it can help you wordsmith, these emails so that your, it’s worded in exactly the way you want it to be. I certainly use AI to wordsmith emails that I send. But just generally, here are some things for you to consider including in having an introductory email like this. Introduce yourself.

Certainly, your connection.

Explain that you either, you know, you saw the work that the person’s been doing, you’ve read their work, you’re interested in having a conversation about it, maybe you saw their presentation.

Whatever it is, explain that connection and why you’re sending the email.

And then once that you kind of shared why you’re sending the email, that and what you need to include in that is if you’re asking for a meeting, if you’re asking you know, whatever it is you’re asking for, be very clear about that. And then, of course, thank the person for their time and their consideration of your request. And you could always say, that didn’t make it on the slide, but you could always ask too if they don’t have maybe time to meet with you.

Do they suggest somebody else who might be able to assist you with your request? And it might be that they really that they don’t have time, but that they do have somebody else that they know who would be a great connection for you and they’d be willing to make that connection. So that can be another way of You know, keeping the conversation flowing and but not, you know, making sure nobody feels too much pressure if it doesn’t work for their schedule and time frame.

So think about there are always challenges to networking and growing your professional community. So I want to kind of address some of those challenges and then help you to kind of rethink ways that we could address them and overcome them.

So if you’re feeling like we all frequently feel that there’s just no time, there’s no time to add anything extra to your plate, I would encourage you to potentially look for gaps in the day. And what I mean by this is that, you know, if there’s even if just fifteen minutes, is there a fifteen minutes where you could, you know, take it to even just scroll online to look for meetups that are happening in your area or professional organizations with special interest groups you’re interested in. That can be a way of just reviewing the landscape to know what’s out there that you might want to get involved in.

Then once you’ve identified something, you can think about is there a way to add it to, you know, add a meeting or add something to an existing event? Are you already going to be close to a location where you could add on attending an event?

Is there something, you know, you could take off your plate so that you can attend something in person or find a time to meet online.

Don’t always think about these as separate things that have to be set up, but potentially could just be a continuation of something that you’re already doing. If you’re already planning to be, you know, at a certain place, see if you can add a coffee, you know, immediately following it with somebody who would like to have a discussion with about a topic.

I mentioned earlier that introversion is one of the challenges that I’ve had to overcome related to professional networking. And one thing that has helped me overcome that is to pick something that I’m really interested in.

You know, and I I said earlier that one way I like to approach it is by thinking about, just being curious. And so when I’ve been able to have conversations with people about something that I’m genuinely interested in, And that excitement’s going to show. Their excitement’s going to show. And any concerns about really not wanting to make small talk, I feel like aren’t as concerning for me at least because we’re both very engaged in the particular topic and curious about it.

You know, also just related to that, start small. Think about one on one conversations, having a coffee with somebody, you know, asking somebody to introduce you to somebody else, that can be a way of breaking the ice.

There are ways to kind of approach these that don’t have to be quite as, in a sense, cold calling, which is never the never super enjoyable. So, yeah, ask for somebody else to introduce you if possible, if you know somebody else who knows someone.

But think about just the network you currently have and how you might be able to expand it that way.

I’m comfortable with small talk. You could always prepare two or three specific talking points. You know, it’s it’s okay to go into a meeting prepared with what you want to talk about, what you’re hoping to discuss. You know, asking some, you know, questions about the work that they’ve been doing, asking it how it might relate to, work that you’ve seen or if there’s a problem that you’re trying to solve, know, be willing to kind of share a little bit about the particular issue, and then ask for feedback. But just, you know, kind of be clear, especially as you set up an initial meeting, what it is that that you want to discuss. So there’s some parameters, and the person you’re meeting with can come prepared as well.

If you’re hesitant about volunteering, at an organization, but think that that might be valuable for you, think about volunteering for a behind the scenes task. You know, your first volunteer, opportunity does not have to be something that’s very front and center for an organization, but it can be, working on name tags for the event or it could be, you know, sitting at the check-in booth, or updating the website. Again, just whatever whatever area that you’re comfortable in, that’s where I would suggest starting.

But if you’re just like, I don’t know where to start. If it feels overwhelming to think about this, I would suggest reflecting on your goals and your interests. So what are you curious about?

But also, where do you want to go? Where do you want your career to be in five years? And maybe the your answer to that question is you don’t know where you want it to be in five years, but you know that you want to move forward, but you’re not sure what that looks like, that could be your goal. The goal could be I’d like to explore possibilities, or explore opportunities.

And then that can just lead to conversations that you’re having with people to learn about work that they’re doing and work that might be open to you.

So at this moment, I just want to take a brief, thirty seconds here. You can always pause the recording, but take a brief moment to pause and reflect on just what goals you might have?

So as you’re thinking about those goals, here are some questions that you might want to ask yourself.

In what capacity do you want to grow?

Do you want to grow in an area related to soft skills?

Do you want to grow in leadership, in technical knowledge, or something else.

And as you identify which area it is that you want to grow in, think about What organizations or what associations or what individuals, you know, kind of fit into those categories if we can think about it like that. Know, there might be a group that is really focused on, you know, library leadership that you want to get involved in and meet some people so that you can gain skills and gain knowledge in that area.

It could be that you want to, you know, thinking about that professional development organization that I was talking about earlier, maybe you want to grow in public speaking skills. So there’s is there a group that’s focused on public speaking?

Is there group related to You know, learning more about how AI functions in the workplace. That could be a special interest group that you would want to get involved in with a professional organization. So I encourage you just to, again, think strategically about where you might want to grow and then look for organizations and individuals who kind of align well with the particular areas of growth that you’ve identified.

Also, reflect on your current professional community.

Ask yourself, what do you want to change about your professional community?

What is working well?

Is there someone you want to reconnect with that maybe you haven’t had a conversation with in a few years?

Make that connection again. Go ahead, send that email, send that message through LinkedIn, whatever it is, you know, find a way to reconnect. It could be in that you just reconnect through email. It could be that you set up a Zoom call. It could be that you set up a coffee.

Is there is there somebody you want to meet?

If you say yes, okay, do you know anyone who can introduce you? Do you need to send just an initial email and see if they’d be willing to have a conversation with you and explain why you’re emailing them, asking for a meeting.

That would be as a one way to approach it.

And then also ask yourself related to your professional community.

Are you able to support someone else? Is there someone else that you know who you might be able to serve as a mentor for or as a support, you know, if they’re more on kind of a peer to peer level that you can either introduce to someone else or you can suggest resources for. You could suggest an organization that they could get involved in. How can you be, you know, supportive in your professional community of others.

And then I also encourage you to ask, what is success for you?

Is that having a bigger network? And if so, why?

I would encourage you to be clear about that.

Is it you know, having a publication, is that one of your goals to publish something?

Is it to take on a leadership role? Is it to obtain a new job?

Is it to work on a collaborative project?

Is it something else? I’m sure this list is certainly not exhaustive.

And, there are like very likely going to be things that you’re thinking about right now that are going to define success for you. And, I would encourage you just to write those down, name that so you can then think about your professional community in light of what success means to you.

So as we wrap up, just really encourage you to identify a goal for the next three, six, nine, and twelve months.

You know, that’s kind of the next the next quarters of the year.

So just having those goals, I think every three months can give you enough time to work towards them, but also keeps you moving forward with towards your goals at a kind of standard time where there not too much time is passing and you’re letting the goals slip away.

So again, I like those quarterly goals personally, and I think approaching it in your mind as a three, six, nine, twelve months can be a good way of setting those goals for yourself, ways that you can work towards those goals, and then taking the necessary action steps for you to do that.

Thank you.

Thank you, Lauren, for the wonderful presentation. And to our audience, if you have any more questions on any of our software or our company, our contact details are listed on the screen. And please stay tuned for more webinars and content related to this series.

On behalf of the Lucidea team, I thank you all for attending today, and until next time. Thank you.