Advice to a library school student from One Big Library

Whenever I come across really good advice for library school students, I like to post it on here, so today I want to share something I came across (thanks, Amy!) from One Big Library: Advice to a library school student.

The best advice anybody ever gave me when I was finishing library school and looking for a job was “look at all your options and choose the most challenging one. If it scares you, like you think maybe you won’t be up to the challenge, you’re on the right track and should go for it.” If you don’t feel challenged now, you’re right to be looking elsewhere (especially if you’re young or don’t otherwise have lots of obligations to other people and can freely look around).

When I was in school I found there was a lot of handwringing amongst my classmates about whether they would be up to the challenge of professional positions. When I started at the Howard Ross Library of Management, I was a bit concerned (read: terrified) by my lack of knowledge about anything business-related. But I saw the position as a challenge, and guess what – I’ve learned a whole lot, both in terms of business information and in terms of librarian skills that will be applicable to any job I may have in the future. So what do I think about scary challenges? I say bring them on!

As always, click through for the rest of the article – you’ll be glad you did.

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New semester, new challenges

So I’m finally starting my first fall semester as a bona fide liaison librarian. Well, maybe “starting” isn’t the right way to put it, since students are already writing midterms. But the library is full of people, whether they’re studying for exams, asking for help with their assignments, or using the group study rooms to work on their group projects.

I’ve been doing plenty of information literacy and reference work, but here’s what else has been keeping me busy:

  • As the current president of the CLA Montreal Chapter, I’ve been working hard with the president elect and past president to line up some great events for the coming year. Anyone in Montreal should join us on Wednesday for our first event of the year in our Salon des
    Bibliothécaires series.
  • I’m also the Awards & Honours Chair of the SLA Eastern Canada Chapter, so if anyone would like to nominate an SLA ECC member as Member of the Year, please let me know.
  • I have a new partner in the Professional Partnering Program. Although I had the option of keeping Christie as my partner, she’s now working part-time at my branch, so I can’t stop her from bugging me I know we’ll still be in touch. My new partner couldn’t make it to the kick-off this past week, but I was fortunate enough to meet her at the ABQLA kick-off the week before – good thing we were all wearing name tags, or I never would have known it was her!
  • I’ve been writing for the Re:Generations blog for the past year, but now I’m officially on the committee! I’m super excited to be working with this great group of people, and we’ve even put in a couple of proposals for CLA 2011 sessions. You can check them out at the CLA’s list of proposals – ours are numbers 69 and 158.
  • Our weeding project (which I discussed briefly on the Re:Gen blog) has become more urgent than I had anticipated, so it looks like I will be spending a lot of time determining which of our print journals are also available online from a reliable source and evaluating the print books that haven’t circulated in the past decade. Fortunately, weeding is an activity I think is essential to any library, and I would even go so far as to say I enjoy working on it.

Of course there’s more, but that’s enough about me for now. Happy Thanksgiving to all of my fellow Canadians, and I hope everyone is having a great fall season.