Elias Tzoc blog!

Last week, I attended three orientation sessions at the ALA Midwinter conference in San Diego, CA.  The sessions were part of the official start of the ALA Discovering Librarianship program, which aims to build a network of early career librarians who can work with the ALA-Diversity Office to identify and help college students pursue careers in librarianship.

We had three sessions; the first one started with messages from three ALA leaders: Roberta Stevens, Camila Alire, and Molly Raphael.  They spoke about the commitment of ALA to support this type of diversity initiative; they also emphasized on the ongoing need to support similar programs with a focus on people who are already in the profession.  It was definitely great to hear what they think about ALA’s goal towards diversity in the profession, especially in tough economic times.  Next, we talked in groups about the decisions that led us to pursuing a degree in librarianship.  I was particularly happy to meet another librarian with an interest in the changing roles of technology in librarianship and information access.

The second session was focused on the need and opportunities for new professionals from underrepresented groups.  At my table, we talked about some of the regional, national, and ALA programs and conferences that support early career librarians from diverse groups.  I shared with my group two recent personal examples: the Minnesota Institute and the Code4Lib Diversity Scholarships.  Then, Lorelle Swader from the ALA Office of Human Resources and Development talked about career paths; which reminded me of a possible addition to a working manuscript about Technical Skills for New Digital Librarians.

The third and last session started with a presentation about Benefits and Rewards; I think some of the topics that came up in this discussion could be incorporated into materials for advocacy, outreach, and recruiting activities.  We also worked on a template for writing personal stories and on a pre-draft of an Elevator Speech.  In the next few months, we will continue to work on the promotion and marketing materials; we will also start looking for possible career fairs to attend in late 2011 or early 2012.

Last but not least, despite the great winter weather in San Diego, I also managed to attend two LITA sessions: Technology Trends in Academic Libraries and Drupal for Digital Library Programs.  It was interesting to learn about projects where developers are using Drupal on top of DSpace or Fedora.  But for now, I just need to get done with a couple of XSLT files for a workshop later this week!

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