Professional Associations

I believe that being actively involved in associations of your industry and/or profession is one of the keys to career success. Librarians and information professionals are lucky to have so many associations dedicated to their interests. I first became a member of ALA where I am involved in the New Members Round Table and the Federal and Armed Forces Libraries Round Table. A year later I joined the DC Chapter of SLA as well as the Government Information Division.

I was only marginally involved in the associations during my Masters program. I attended the ALA Annual Conference 2007 in DC, the SLA New Members Reception 2007 in DC, and became a NMRT liaison to FAFLRT. However, now that I have graduated and "have more free time" I decided to become more involved in the profession through volunteering and publishing. I am happy to report that these efforts are off to a great start.

In the next post I will talk about SLA's 23 Things Challenge. I will follow up on that with a post about the Careers in Federal Libraries Google Group initiative.