 Good morning and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I'm your host for supporter here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the Commission's weekly online event. We're a webinar, a webcast, an online show. The terminology in some in some areas is up for debate. But whatever you want to call us we heard here live online every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. Central Time. If you're unable to join us on Wednesdays that's fine. We do record the show and it is posted to our website every week and I'll show you at the end of today's show where you can go and see all those recordings. Both of the live show and our recordings are free and open to anyone to watch. So please do share with your colleagues, friends, neighbors, family, anybody you think might be interested in any of our topics that we have. They can register for upcoming shows or watch any of our previous shows. Encompass Live has been around since January 2009. So we have a lot of items in our archives. We are librarians. We do say everything. So our archives, you go back that far so don't be aware when you do look at them. There are, they could be some out-of-date things, topics that have already seemed to be not new up to speed. But they're there for historical purposes, of course. We do a mixture of things here on the show. Booker views, interviews, many training sessions, demos of services and products. Really the only criteria we have is that it is something library related. Something libraries are doing, not something we think they could be doing. It's something new they might be interested in. Some of our topics, you may look at a title and say, what does that have to do with libraries? But trust me, I do make sure everything has to do with libraries ultimately. We do have library commission staff that sometimes come on and do shows for us for things that the library commission here in Nebraska is doing for our libraries. But we also bring in guest speakers and as we have this morning, to my left here is Andrew Cano, who is from, well he's a couple of different things. He's from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Lincoln libraries, which is right up the street from us here in Lincoln. But he is also our incoming NLA, Nebraska Library Association, for those of you not from Nebraska, president elect. So wearing two hats. Yeah, that's a moment. And Andrew's going to talk a few things in the library field for a while. Yeah, 13 years on. Yeah, so he's going to talk about tips for early career success and things that you can do for yourself. So I will just hand over control to you and you can go ahead and take it away. Hi, good morning, everybody. Thanks for joining me. I don't know if you saw the graphic here at the beginning, but it was supposed to be kind of a fuzzy image that came into focus, kind of a little gimmicky thing I had. Just to kind of make my point that sometimes as we navigate our careers, we really can see what's going on. Our careers tend to be out of focus. And when things are out of focus, it really is kind of like hiking in the woods. You have your eyes closed, you have your arms in front of you, you're hoping for the best, you're hoping you don't fall off a cliff, and that you ultimately get to your destination. And again, I think that's just an apt metaphor for how some of us in the early stages of our careers feel. So my presentation today is called Finding Your Focus because I really want you to realize that there's not a one-size-fits-all approach to things. I'm going to give very, very general advice here, maybe some general tips, clean from experience. And I'm really hoping to have enough time at the end for questions. Given the format of this presentation, I'm just going to go through this. If you have questions, just type them in, and we'll get to them at the beginning. Usually, I like to interact with the members as I'm presenting. And I gave a version of this a few months ago to NLA. But given our format, again, just type in your questions, and I'll get to them. And I'm hoping to go through this maybe in a half hour if I'm lucky, giving us 20 minutes or so for a good amount of question and answers. Yeah, feel free to type in any time you want. I'm totally willing to interrupt. Yeah, and I'm willing to be interrupted. Same thing, if I'm like making weird eye contact because I really have no idea where I'm looking at with this camera or I'm yelling at you because I don't know how to modulate my voice with this microphone, I'll feel free to give that kind of a cosmetic feedback. And I'll make adjustments as well. So a little bit about me, usually on this slide, I'll spend a little time talking about each of my jobs and where I've been in the interest of time and because there are almost 40 people signed up for this, I don't know how many were attending alive. But I do, you know, in case more people come in, I do want to have time for Q&A. I'm just gonna say that suffice it to say over 13 years, I've been in several places. So these are kind of my six employers. And that starts with as a work study student. So to kind of talk about the bookends here, I was a work study student at the political college Josephina. That's kind of a mouthful. It was over in Columbus, Ohio, theological seminary. And that's what introduced me to the library world. I honestly, if it wasn't for that experience, I would not have ended up being a librarian again now. And then on the other end is the Nebraska libraries, which is where I'm at now as an assistant professor, virtual learning librarian. And in the four in between kind of I bounced around a little bit, moved in different places. I know that a couple of you are from Dallas, if you're here, Strayer with the North Dallas campus off of a Coyt and 635 if you know where that is, I used to live downtown Dallas love downtown main library. So if you're here, kudos to you for having a wonderful library system there in Dallas. And then I saw one person from Tarleton again, don't know if you're here. But when I was a clinic community college, we do have a branch of Tarleton a satellite campus. So I did work with some Tarleton personnel and working in the library there. We had a lot of Tarleton students that we serve. So again, so I'm enjoying seeing the signup sheet and seeing some connections there. But ultimately, going back to the main point, I held several jobs as a paraprofessional as an academic librarian as an adjunct librarian and also in a paraprofessional role so this administrative stuff. And it gave me a lot of good experiences. And that's what I'm going to share with you today gave me a lot of insights into different things. But at the same time, it also provided a lot of instability. So, you know, looking back on it, I can connect the dots and see how everything kind of played out and I learned from things. But at that time, when I was there, I didn't know where things were going. And I just really made mistakes. So the theme of today's presentation is really what I wish someone had told me when I was earlier. Oh, perfect. Great. Is it Allie Warren? Yes. Nice to see you. Steven Bello is wonderful. I actually, I love those small type of schools. So you work on a fantastic place. And I actually really miss Texas. I love a lot of things about Texas. So and it's actually as hot here as it is there, believe you or not, it is going to be. Yes. I think we're 103 by Friday or something. Yeah, I like here. It's interesting. Many people when they go into libraries, they kind of focus on one type of library to work in. Yeah. And it's nice to see that you don't have to do that, though. You can. I mean, you were public library community college. That's correct. Big university. I mean, it's okay. That's it. That's correct. It is okay. It's okay to have this kind of. Exactly. It's yeah, and I'll come back to that point, but it is good to have a nonlinear path because it really gives you appreciation for what other people do. So for example, with my putting on my NLA hat, I know what paraprofessional school through. We have a very active paraprofessional section. And I, you know, being having started as a paraprofessional doing librarian work at the Columbus Metropolitan Library, I can, I can appreciate them. And then at the universities, I got to do a lot of non library work. So no, what admissions go through and it would registrars go through professors go through. And that helps me do my job at UNL. But again, wouldn't have been the path I chose, but it was the path that I walked. And I'm glad to be here because I know one thing if anything had gone different, I wouldn't be right here in this room talking to you. And that's where I want to be right now. So enough about me. Here's my first tip. Oh, Mike, there's a typo up there. Okay. Apologies for that typo. That's on me. Interesting, that's unlike me. Anyway, so my first tip is set your goals. And I, and there's a wonderful quote I found from Yogi Berra there. Yeah, if you don't know where you're going, you'll end up someplace else. And that quote is so perfect for me. Now that someplace else end up being a good place to be. But sometimes it's not sometimes you end up going somewhere you don't or you end up having to start over. And that can be a very, very frustrating experience. So one thing I wish I had done and I would go back to library school and do this is really just set my goals of what it is that I wanted to be. I just went to library school. I really didn't know all the different kind of career paths that there are in the library world. I didn't know the specific skills required for specific jobs. And in hindsight, I should have waited another year or two to kind of learn about that before going to library school. And one piece of advice I would give is find a job that you really want. And preferably a job that you're not qualified for. You know, you can look at the job listings, look at ALA job list, look at the NLC job postings, you know, look at higher jobs if you're in higher ed. But look around trying to find a job that's maybe two or three levels above you. You don't have the experience for it. You don't have the degree possibly. You don't have the skills and maybe three years of supervisory experience that kind of stuff or you know, managing particular databases. And just look at that job description and start jotting down what they're looking for, you know, jot down the skills that you need the years of experience. And then using kind of principles of design thinking work backwards and try to establish steps to get to those goals. So if you need three to five years of supervisory experience, well, you need a three to five years of supervisory experience. So try to get yourself in a position to get into that supervisory position. So let's say you want to be a library director. Well, that supervisory experience is probably going to start as a team leader, maybe as an assistant manager, you know, something whatever it is that your institution calls it just that entry level management. And then you find out, well, what do I do to get into that entry level management? Maybe six months of experience there, maybe you need a proven record in a particular skill set. So again, you can see what I'm doing you're working backwards. And as you start working backwards, you can create the little goals, the little individual steps you need to get to that next step. Also, some of those steps may require, you know, more, more education, you may need an advanced degree if you're in higher ed, you know, you probably need a doctorate for a lot of jobs nowadays. At the very least, you may need a second master's degree if you don't have one already. So you need to make a plan, hey, I need, I need this degree. Sometimes it's not negotiable, you need this other degree. So you go ahead and you make goals, okay, which school can I go to? Do I get tuition or admission at my current institution? Is there any kind of tuition this time based on my ALA membership or your state library association that you know, any programs you can go to. If you need just particular skills, let's just say you need coding experience, and let's go ahead and say C++. You may not necessarily have to go to school for that. You may be able to find, you know, Code Academy, Code School, Khan Academy, other, you know, avenues through which to develop those skills. Either way, I don't want to get bogged down with too many specific examples. The plan is create those goals and then create a roadmap for how to get to those goals and be prepared to maybe have to compromise a little bit and say, you know what, because of my family, because of my geographic location, whatever reasons there are, you may end up realizing, you know, I'm just not going to be able to do that. I may not have time to invest in six to eight years on a doctorate degree if I go part-time and then adjust your goals accordingly. Okay, you shouldn't have done that. This mouse is a little sensitive, but you can all enjoy my cat there. Tip two, that's and that's kind of the next point is identify those gaps. And that's what I was just speaking about is, you know, finding out what it is you have and finding out what it is you don't have. You're taking an inventory of your own skills and degrees, credentials, etc. And you try to figure out how to fill them. Again, it might be going back to school. It might be taking a free move or free class. It may just be going to work extra early and working 10 hours in a for an eight hour shift because you need that extra hour at the beginning and the end of your day to just kind of develop those experiences. It might be, you know, shadowing another professional. It might be meeting with other people. It might be just sitting back and observing. There's a lot of value to that just sitting back and observing. I know one thing I actually did right was when I was in the Metropolitan Library system, I would work in other branches. I would on Sundays, we were allowed to trade shifts at the time. And I would go to different branches to see different size, different types of patrons, just different experience all the way from small neighborhood libraries in very poor communities to very affluent ones, whole different types of patrons. And I got to see the kind of people I want to serve and the kind of skills I want to develop. And that helped me really identify my own gaps and and develop that same thing here when I'm at the university. I have a lot of gaps, you know, it's hard for sometimes you realize those gaps and you get hired for a job. Believe it or not, I know some of you will be shocked. Library school doesn't prepare you for everything. And you just have to again look back and say, man, I should have taken that elective or maybe you should have paid more attention on this week, but you didn't. So you got to focus on where you're at and again, and just fill that very quickly and create a plan for yourself. And one person that can help you do that a lot is a mentor. And if there's any big takeaway from today's presentation, you just do not remember anything else, is to just find a mentor. You know, look through your state associations. I will plug an NLA, then you member roundtable is creating a program. I would Yeah, then you'd be exactly and I would recommend that you know, if you're not, even if you're not a member of NMRT to contact us and reach out my contact info at the end of this email, at the end of the slide. So just email me and I can get you in touch with the right people, go to our website. If you're not in Nebraska, maybe look at your state association and just look around and it could just be finding somebody at your own work. Because a mentor will guide you, will help you realize what's realistic, what's not, will give you practical advice, because not everything is written down. There's the way things should work and the way things do work. And sometimes there's a gap in between it. And you know, sometimes it really is just a matter of whose hands you've shaken and who you've met and where you happen to be. And a mentor can help you navigate those waters. My advice for a mentor is one, even if you have different mentors, are kind of with lowercase M. I have several people I work with. One works with me on my research skills and no one works with me on my people skills, which I need sometimes, some days. Another one works with me a little bit on some of the technical stuff that I'm working at right now. I'm working with some high-end technology stuff that I just wasn't familiar with. But you'd have kind of like a case manager, so to speak, a big capital M mentor, the person who can really meet with you and give you that advice and ideally it's somebody who's in a position that you want. At least two levels above you. So look at your organizational chart and you want to find somebody who's in a position at least two levels above you. Not too high. You don't, you know, if you're first year in a public library, you may not want to talk to the chair of the board or the director at this stage. You don't think with me, I probably don't want to have my dean as my mentor at this point, maybe down the road. But you know, it's something that you can be in the next five to ten years. You can be in that position. But that being said, I gave the example of my dean. You really don't want that person in your chain of command. That introduces a different dynamic. And if that person is, you know, is in any way making decisions about your future, you're not going to be able to speak freely to that. You really, you know, for those with a Catholic background, you almost want like a spiritual director or confessor. You want somebody you can share things with professionally, preferably. But someone who can just give you candid advice. And again, if they're making decisions about you, there's just no way someone can unremember something. Sometimes that's not possible. If you're in a small rural community, that's unavoidable. But I would say, you know, you kind of negotiate the boundaries at the beginning. So, you know, what's appropriate and what's not. When you look for a mentor, sometimes you don't hit a homerun the first time. It's like a therapist or a dentist or any other personal trainer or any other kind of profession like that. You may end up finding the wrong one. And I will warn you that a bad mentor... Exactly. You don't realize it at first. But before you know it, you're being given bad advice, excuse me. Not because the person is insanely evil or malicious, but just because there's a mismatch going on there. There's just for whatever reason. I said, I think a personal trainer is a great example. It's just not working out for whatever reason. It might be you, might be him or her, but it's somebody and this isn't working out and that you're all professionals at the end of the day and it's time to say, look, I need to find a good mentor. You don't want to stick with somebody just because you want to save face and not be embarrassed because, again, it may take you years to recover from the bad advice. Hopefully you'll end up in a lava pit and with artificial lamps and become the dark lord of the universe. Not in libraries. No, that's a safe bet that you won't go that far. It's... I like the part. I always thought about doing mentorship that it's always, how do I find the right person who's the one for me. But when you mentioned there could be more than one person. I never really thought about that. I mean, I always thought about how do I, if I am the mentor, be the one person for everything this person needs that has libraries. I don't know everything about all the things they might be doing. And the other way around, how do I find the one person that can mentor me? But it doesn't have to be. You might even have multiple wants because certain people have certain strengths. That's absolutely correct. And it just is talking to focus on... That makes a lot less pressure. Exactly. And just to focus on me, like I do have one person who's technically lateral to me. She's got more years of experience, but she's lateral to me in terms of position. And she gives me a lot of really good advice in terms of how to do my job. You know, really at the university level, it takes a couple of years to really figure out what ways north on Sundays. And so she's helped me a lot with some of my we have teaching, research and service at the university academic level. So she helps me with my teaching and how to do my job a little bit better, manage my time a little bit better. And then my big mentor just kind of keeps checking on me. OK, well, did you talk to so-and-so about this and the like, you know, he and I meet every couple of months and he is my mentor on research, but that's just coincidence. So yeah. I would say the standards for the small lowercase M mentor are lower. It could be a colleague. It could be somebody in another department. It could be somebody with a job that you have no intention of doing, but someone who in some way shape or form is helping you, especially if it's an experienced person who's been around for a few decades and again knows how things really work, which is not always in the manual. Someone who knows what's going on and if they're at your college. Exactly. And I listed these tips in order just to say it's kind of sequential because you can find a mentor and you really know what your what your goals are and what those gaps are because that's really what's going on. It's going to go to a therapist example. If you go see a therapist and ask them why you're here and you say what, I have no clue. That's just off to a bad start. But if you say I have this diagnosis or I have this behavior and I have these things I want to work on, now the therapist can give you specific advice. And the therapist may say, well, I'm sorry, I don't treat people with acts. You need to see, you know, here's a referral. Same thing with a mentor. Mentor can say, you know what, I'm not the right person for you, but I think this other person could. So it's just a win-win situation when you know that. And that leads to my, you know, I sent you the wrong one. I updated all this, but I went from tip to step. I guess I'm so I apologize for that. I will make sure that this is a recording, but if any of you want these slides, I will make sure I sent you the ones that I had updated, which apparently did not attach to this email. But tip four, not step four, is stick to the plan. So at this point, if you're if you're following it, I guess the Andrew Pantel model, you set your goals, you've identified gaps, you find a mentor who's going to help you fill those gaps. And so you have a plan. You've had you formed a plan at this point. Stick to it. This was my biggest mistake over the last 13 years is as soon as things didn't go right. And I'm talking six months later, I'm a very old millennial, so I could probably best categorize myself, because as soon as things didn't go right, I'm like, okay, I'm just going to switch gears and go to another direction. And patience truly is a virtue. It's going to take years to see the fruit of some of your efforts. And you have to be willing to invest those those years. I'm not saying you don't switch positions. I'm not saying obviously you don't accept a promotion or maybe realize, hey, I am miserable in this job and I have to leave it. I'm just saying you need to stick to it again. It's like exercise. It's just it's going to take a while. You got to do it every day. And three years on the road, you'll finally look at your biceps and say, oh, wow, that paid off. So it's the same thing with with the plan. So stick to it. That being said, my final tip is be flexible. Life will happen. Let me repeat that. Life will happen. You will realize that the person you are at 30 was not the person you were at 22. The person worth 40 is not the person you were at 30. You will have kids, you will marry, you will, you will move. The job will change on you. They will bring in a new robot and said, OK, this person, this robot will now do the job of the five of you. Things will happen. You know, those of us have been in the library field for even a few years know the job has completely changed. So again, life will happen. So you have to be flexible. And that's why it's really good to develop skills that are transferable to different areas. You always want to look for professional development opportunities. You always want to develop skills, kind of have an exit plan is kind of maybe a way to capture this. If you needed to just change gears in the turn, you know, turn on a dime, you have to be ready for that. And just to just according to that, you've been, you know, if you've been following the other tips, you will be in a good position to do that because you'll again, you'll have those skills that you can market to other employers or, you know, maybe talk to your supervisor and say, maybe I can shift over to this department, maybe you're in cataloging and you want to shift over maybe to archives. And you can say, I bring in the skills that are transferable. So again, have that plan and be flexible. So with all that, here's my contact info. Again, as I mentioned, you can email me, I will send you the slides that fix those typos because I'm not happy about that I'm kind of OCD about those things. You can send them the correct ones. Okay, and I'll put them up with them. Correct. Fantastic. I'll send them to Krista. I'll get the new ones. Great. Sure. Sure. And that's my personal information. So if you want to, you know, just reach out to me, either to talk about MLA, that mentoring that I mentioned, or if you want to talk about maybe getting something started in your library association or want me to expand upon anything. Let me know. But we have, I made it, I somehow did it. We have plenty of time left here. And how many are in the room right now? 11? Okay. Yeah. Okay, there's 12 here. We had a lot more signed up, but that's even better for you because honestly, each of you has about two minutes of questions that you're allowed to have. So please don't be shy. I'm just going to sit here and awkwardly look at the camera until you ask question. So let's, so shoot. I was trying to find here myself. Yeah, so please do type in the question section of your go to other interface. Any questions you have, anything you want to know more about anything you're curious about and what you're doing in your career, if you're looking for any tips of what you can do as trying to see if I could find. I don't know if they'll have it up there. You hear something yes, about that our new members around the table commenting on. Yeah, the information, she's going to bring it up. The information is on Facebook, which I do not use. So I had no idea. I have no idea what's on L.A. Facebook. Oh, this is a member around tables on Facebook. Oh, okay. M.M.C. exclusive and M.R.T. around table. Yeah. Again, and if you are in Nebraska, we have our conference in October and there will be a presentation on this mentoring program as well. Yeah, yeah, Terry Rickle will be presenting on Mentorship and Leadership and the committee that's in charge of this if the roundtable members will be answering questions. And you're going to hear a lot more about that. But again, even if you're not in Nebraska, I would encourage you to look for it. L.A. offers a little bit. I'm in the special program at L.A. and I'm now a mentor. I'm that old now that I've become a mentor to a fresh young library school graduate. Actually, I was I was a little too optimistic in my Googling, which I did an M.R.T. mentor assuming I'm here in Nebraska. That's sure. And it came with L.A.'s mentoring program. Okay. Well, that's a good question. So the L.A. and M.R.T. the new members roundtable does offer mentoring. So again, there's plenty of opportunities. And again, it could just be a matter of even your employer offering mentors. There's all kinds of abductions. I have a lot of people talked about getting a mentor and having someone official. And I've never, okay, never officially been a mentor to someone as far as I know, as for and never asked anyone. And that's the part that I have trouble with is the ask. How do you ask someone to do something that makes it that like an official thing? Because it seems like a huge step to me. And so I just I had people who I asked for advice from who I know were either in my position before, or and I would just have where I worked here at the commission or I just work at a university back in New York, but elsewhere out in the field who are colleagues that I can ask advice and things of. But I've never officially said, will you be my mentor? How do you get? How do you do that? Yeah, you haven't gone steady. Yeah, it seems like a real, yeah, official. Yeah, I used to get meet with them regularly. Yeah, I meet with my capital M mentor regularly with the other people that I consider mentors, and we don't even really use that term. I meet with them a little bit more and frequently as I need the pay of having this issue. Can you give me advice? And there is that, you know, kind of a mutual agreement that, you know, we're working on particular issues. So that's an excellent question. And that's why I really strongly recommend looking for a formal program where people have signed up to be mentors. That's what this one is. Yeah, that the argument members rendezvous doing is they're asking for people to volunteer to be the mentors saying, I'm willing to do this. And then people were looking for one and then they get exactly. So with ALA, I signed up to be a mentor in the spectrum program. And based on it's almost kind of a tender, I guess, based on our match, you know, I'll date myself with match. They kind of looked at what I wanted in mentee with the specific mentee one of the mentor and they really just kind of matched this up very well. I met him in Chicago at ALA. He's out of state and yet we're going to pick a better match there. So go through a formal program. If there isn't a formal program near you or accessible to you, you might want to maybe talk to other peers and just say, Hey, is there mentoring available? Is anyone willing to be a mentor? And that gets a little bit more difficult. And that really just depends on your situation. I guess you're I increased that you asked such a great question. I mean, what is the ask? You know, when you're sitting with somebody say, Would you like to be my mentor? I would just say if there is no formal program, when you reach out to somebody, I would maybe just say be up front. I'm looking for a mentor who can provide this. You don't have to meet every single week or anything. It really could be every two months, maybe every three months to check in. There is this thing called email that they have nowadays I think is going to take off. And so it really could just be about touching basis on a regular basis. So I hate to try to give a general answer to base specific situation, but that would be my advice is to be up front with the first and then explain to them why it is you're reaching out and what it is you want. And then if there's, you know, and I think that avoids the awkwardness if you've been talking to somebody for a couple of times, you know, now they feel bad about saying no if they just don't have the time. But again, the takeaway there is try to find a formal program and there isn't one demand one demand one from your employer demand one from your state association. Just look for one because it really is critical to developing the next generation of workers. Yeah, because someone did ask, there was a previous question, but that actually just relates to what you just said. So as I work in a public library, can't afford ALA membership, any recommendations for looking for a free resource? Oh, okay. I guess it would have to be your employer. Yeah, the free resource would be your employer. Or if you just know a senior member in your local community, in your profession that you would be willing to ask, because I'll bet you for your state association, see if you're a local worker where you're at has something similar. And if they don't. Yeah, I bet you that if you talk to somebody, your similar position, someone will say, oh, yeah, this person was a huge help to me. I mean, I think within your peer group, people already know you can always talk to somebody about this. And I'm maybe more of Yeah. Even an informal type situation can work as well. I think it doesn't have to be an official life from one of these situations where we'll match you up and you know, official and I say legal, but that's not really one of these. Yeah, it could be just Hey, this person's great to ask advice. That's correct. Yeah. I didn't see another question about smaller library. Lucy asked that questions. I saw. Yeah, so this season often told I'll have to move to a smaller institution to move up. Do you think this is good advice? How big of an institution are you at right now? Yeah, so there's a question. A Duke. OK, great. There's a question in also Ali. We see your question. It's in the queue right now. And no, no, great, great question. And yeah, Duke, I would say Duke is very highly competitive. So I can imagine that opportunities there may be rare and difficult given just the level of librarians that are there and other professionals, you know, it's good. I'm not going to say it's bad advice. It is good advice, but it depends. It just depends. I have been in very small institutions. For example, City College next year, I was the only librarian at my campus. And the good part is that helps you get a lot more responsibility a lot faster. I mean, I was thrown into the deep end of the pool at City College when I got there and I learned a lot on the job. So you get to learn things that normally you would not get if you're in a highly specialized position in the bigger library. The flip side of that is when you have no one to help you out. I mean, I was doing things wrong in a lot of areas that I had no one to correct me on. I mean, I wish I would have had someone to say, Hey, Andrew, this is a better way to do it. This is, you know, this was a good time. Hey, that's not very ethical. I mean, just to give an example, at City College, I was helping students prove free to edit their papers, which I'm kind of in my heart. I thought that was just a service that libraries should be providing. And it was finally when I talked to a peer of mine at another campus, she said, well, but that's kind of a minefield because what if they get created poorly? What if you made a mistake on APA style? What if you made a suggestion that the professor doesn't like? And the student says, well, he helped me out with it. You know, that's that's that's kind of it's a fine line on their other things was I wasn't I wasn't keeping accurate gait count was probably maybe a more black and white example. So it's so again, I mean, without getting bogged down into specific examples, there's things that I wish I would have had a little bit more guidance. I also got to learn mark records inside and out much more than I would have wanted. If there had been a cataloger, I would have saved a lot of time. I wish you had a cataloger which I would have had a cataloger. So so again, just to answer and move on to Ali's question, it just it depends. You have to make a decision for yourself. So the benefit of a smaller institution is you get more responsibility. So you'll get noticed. I mean, that's that's a fair point. You'll get you'll get noticed because, you know, at a younger age or else to be speaking, you've had more responsibilities. This flip side is you don't have a lot of people to help you you also may find yourself having less opportunities because let's just say you have a library director above you. If that library director is not going anywhere, you're stuck in your position. No matter how good you are, you're going to have to look outside that organization to get a promotion whereas somewhere like Duke, there will be multiple openings at a time. There'll be multiple opportunities. There's different leadership. There might be a team leader. There might be someone who's your provider responsibility. There would just be different roles that you can move into and then also, unfortunately, this is the way it shouldn't work this way, but the way it works sometimes if your end goal is a big institution, they don't always look well upon smaller. They want to see that you've proven that you can do this job at a big institution. I know that was something I struggled getting to a big university because I had never worked in an institution with more than 10,000 students. Here I am at UNL with 25,000. And I just know that was something I had to talk through because it came up in my interviews. So it's kind of a two-way sword. I would say definitely weigh those pros and cons and make the best decision you can for yourself in terms of do you want to be in a bigger institution? Do you want to be in a smaller institution? Always making sure that you're looking at your goals and moving towards your goals. Yeah, I think I worked in, I guess, say a medium-sized university in New York as a base university before I came to Nebraska. And I guess we consider it smaller in that I started out as just reference librarians right at a library school. And in nine years I was head of reference department, which is just one below being the University of Librarian because that there wasn't as many people working there. It was just that it was a thing that happened, new positions moving up. So if you're talking about, I mean, so I had three different increasingly higher levels in just nine years because it was a smaller institution. But I think what you're just say you said really about goals. That's what you have to look at first. What is your goal? Do you want to be at a bigger university? Yeah. Then maybe you need to stick it out there. Obviously, something will open up eventually because that's how it works. Yes. Come and go. But it may be more difficult because there's so much more going on people who are at somewhere and get 10 year and are like, I'm here and I'm not moving until I die. Yeah. That it may be difficult than in a more medium or smaller place where there is more transition and chance to. So yeah. Yeah. That's absolutely correct. So it's good advice but take it with it with a grain of salt and apply it to your situation. Do you want to read Ali's question? Yeah, Ali has a is there any way you can think of to avoid the minefield of problems with having a mentor as your direct supervisor, especially considering a smaller area? Basically, sometimes you don't have a choice. There is no one else to ask. So how do you? Yeah. Well, I would say the answer is yeah, don't don't step in that minefield. I mean, it's like if I went to a military area and I saw a sign that said, won't caution mind, I possibly tiptoe around it. But you know what? Chances are it's not going to be successful. I would never ever recommend in any circumstances having your supervisor be your capital M mentor. It just it just doesn't work out in many organizations but actually forbid that. Now, because of his or her position, your supervisor is a mentor. Absolutely. Your mentors, you know, I'm sorry. Different versions. Different versions, yes. Yeah, to see somebody that guides you in I'm your supervisor and I'm telling you how exactly to do your job. But then you're talking about earlier about the going to confession. Exactly. Yeah, it's spiritual. It's the first time you can say, oh, my God, can you believe what just can you tell me what to do about this crazy thing that's going on? Yes, that's that's actually correct. So to use an example of interpersonal conflict, let's just say that I mean, this is hypothetical. I'm having a conflict with my colleague. Once I bring it to my chair's attention, who would be that's just say my chair was my mentor. Now that's an actionable item. My chair cannot choose to not hear that. My chair is now aware that there's a conflict between me and a colleague and she's going to have to take action in some way, should perform it. It cannot be ignored. Now, that being said, if you know, so I go see my chair who is who does function as a mentor and I can talk about, you know, maybe how I'm handling something she can give me advice and she can give me huge advice about the quality of my work because ultimately she's the one making decisions on me, especially for those of you non-academy. I mean, when you really truly have a relationship where this person can fire you, you know, that's kind of the nuclear option. But you want to you obviously want to listen to that person and hopefully you have a supervisor direct supervisor that you trust and can tell you, OK, to do your job better, do X, Y and Z. So yes, you can that you can absolutely look to your supervisor for mentoring. I would just no issue before I make that you're one single only mentor because there are issues that you're going to want to share with other people who can keep it in confidence and not be obligated to have to pass it up the chain. I think looking outside in a smaller place, looking outside your institution, but it also doesn't have to be because I have my own colleagues all across the country, particularly the world. Yeah, I only communicate with online. Yeah, Facebook group, emails, Twitter, whatever. And I consider some of them, I guess, small and sort of never asked any of them officially to be the one. And I have certain people that I go to and they just happen to be at places around the country. Yeah, you know, get involved in social media and see who starts responding to you about things you say or reach out to someone that way. It doesn't have to be somebody who works in your university or even in your town. If you see someone who's doing something similar to you or someone who used it a couple of steps above you at a similar institution or some kind of place where you want to be, reach out to them and they, there's so many people communicate just because of the nature of the way the world is now exclusively online. That is a way to have it happen. Absolutely. And Ali, in your specific case, you're within a couple of hours from Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth, and the way it goes about an hour. I would recommend you might want to look at, and I don't know what type of work you do. I don't know if you're, you know, archives or reference services or instruction, but you may want to look for somebody, you know, a senior member who's at SMU in Dallas or University of Texas, Austin, was obviously, obviously has the library school, so that would be a fantastic place. She's a periodical student. You're periodical student. So I cannot give you any name right now or any recommendations, but, you know, you want to look at these bigger universities or in serials, periodical services or in a position you want to go to. Maybe that's not where you want to end up being. Maybe you want to be in a different line of work or in the ministry or the role. And just maybe reach out and see if there's anyone you could recommend. Or if you're a member of TXLA, I would, I would recommend going through there. But again, you, again, you have the benefit of being within a couple of hours of major, major metropolitan areas where you have multiple universities and consequently multiple, multiple professionals to choose from. So don't be, don't be scared to drive and just visit. Because again, you're not seeing this person every week. You, you know, you can be seeing this person every two or three months. My man T, he lives in a loin right now. He's job hunting. He could end up. Things like state calls. Exactly. Do you want to face the face thing? Yeah, absolutely. Because I will, it could be months if I ever see my man T again, you know, at a conference or something just because we don't even know where he's going in the living. So, you know, just take advantage of that. And again, text, you know, Texas has some outstanding library professionals in there. You definitely have that benefit. She's very good. Thank you for distinguishing those type of mentor roles that you're talking about. All right. Katelyn has a question. A long thing here. So when it comes to professional organizations and conferences, do you just sign up and show up? Is it a good start? Is it good to start going to conferences like state life association one's pretty early on career as like a means to rub elbows to the right people in addition to learning new things? Absolutely. Absolutely. Thank you for that softball, Katelyn. I'll also do your check. That's the easy one. You know, I'll make a distinction again between the way the world should work and the way the world does work. It would be great if it was merit-based that you know, and it is, I don't want to be cynical, but it would be great if everything was based on qualifications and the like. But I used an example. I was talking to a colleague ACRL for those that aren't familiar. It's the Association for College and Research Libraries. It's a division of ALA and it's the only reason I'm an ALA member because it's, you know, it adds up. Those professional dudes add up real quick, but ALA is the gatekeeper to ACRL. And I would love to one of my goals is to be on a committee with ACRL. So I was talking to a colleague of mine as saying, you know, I want to do X, Y, and Z to be able to get to this goal. And she kind of laughed. And she's like, Andrew, you know how I ended up on these three committees? And I'm like, how? I just knew the person in charge. Like, I knew the chair. So when you talk about shaking hands, rubbing elbows, absolutely yes. I don't know if this is typical in other professions, but in the library world, coughing up the money, going to ALA, going to ACRL, going to is, is Katelyn under breath. No, Fort Bend County Library. So is that Colorado? Where are you at, Katelyn? Is that Colorado? Well, if it's called I think Texas, Texas. OK, a lot of Texans today. So TXLA is a good one. Absolutely making those connections. I would also sometimes you might be looking at a little break if you volunteer to do work. Like I had a colleague. This is in the the Texas Distance Library Association. He's not a librarian, he's an instructional designer. For years, he stuffed a lot of packets for conference. So I was just going to say. Yeah, and he paid his duty. Volunteering to work at the conference. I've done that for the Brassville Library Association. And talk about the grant work. When we have our conference here in Lincoln, the Library Commission has lots of resources here as far as laptops and projectors and a physical avi equipment for all the different conferences. So rather than renting it, we are in charge of that. And I spend my conference when it's here running around from room to room and stickers and comfy clothes, just making sure all the technology works. And so people see me and know me. I don't do it for their reasons. I did it because it was something I could do. But yeah, definitely getting involved in conferences. One thing that my dad taught me. My dad was in that's in New York. I'm from State University of New York. He was in several administrations of education. And he said, it's not always what you know. It's who you know. That's absolutely correct. And it's just, yes, getting out there and just having your face just being there. Yeah, maybe being a little brave for some people, this is brave, submitting a conference session proposal and presenting on something you're doing. For some people that is a scary proposition standing in front of a room of 30, 40, 50 whoever knows how many people. But just get your name on something and then suddenly people will see and then you have something that you can also bring and say. So I was presenting on this topic and I know you're interested in it too. And it starts small. Like I mentioned it earlier, joining these organizations is expensive. Yeah, if you can do ALA right now, focus on TXLA. I think everybody needs to join their state one. If it's a financial sacrifice, I would just put it on your budget as just a professional necessity. You know, you just need it. That to me is there's one group you're gonna join, it's your state association. And start looking for small little committees because again, when you apply for a committee, they're gonna ask you, there's gonna be a question, this is what previous experience do you have? And if you said, hey, I was stuffing envelopes here, I greeted people with the website, I helped with the Twitter handle. They're gonna see that you're active. You're not just trying to put a line on your resume. They're gonna see that, hey, you put in the sweat and the blood into this organization and like Chris was saying, give those presentations. If you don't wanna be up there in front of a possibly future bosses, which you should think of them as, think of them as future bosses. You know, if this person will interview me, what's gonna happen? It start with a poster presentation. Poster session, you have three minutes, three to five minutes of poster presentation. You say that over and over again, and it's a good way to get your toe in the water. There might also be lightning rounds, but yeah, definitely yes. So the answer to the question is an easy yes. Be involved in professional organizations because that's the only way we're gonna accomplish the goal of moving up. And see if potentially your institution will support you in that monetarily. And it does vary, and I know it's changing day to day to some organizations. Here at the library commission, where I work at, we pay our own membership fees, but the commission will pay our registration fee for conference. So up to whatever the member rate is. And there are grants. There's a giveaway. There are grants to scholarships. There are grants to scholarships. Oh, look at scholarships, yeah. Here in Nebraska, we have some of our, regional systems and NLA. We give grants to professional development grants to attend conferences. Look for them and get someone else to grant them. Yeah, ALAs, if you wanna be active with ALA, they have a lot of scholarships for new people, for diversity, they even have scholarships for mid-career librarians. I mean, they really, ALA offers a lot of support for different stages. I'm going to a conference in April in San Antonio, by the way. So I'll be down at the River Walk, which is one of my favorite places. They, the conference gives every, it's every two years, they give a scholarship to a first-time presenter, every conference. So if you're a first-time presenter, if you're new to the profession, look for those kind of scholarships because there are a lot of organizations that recognize that. I got a grant from the Mid Plains Library Association, which Texas is not a member of, but I'm a member of that group and they do the Midwest here in the, a little bit of the West. And I was able to get a $500 scholarship to attend ACRL and that helped me a lot. That combined with the ACRL scholarship, funded me if not, I would not have been able to go. And let me tell you, ACRL was a great experience for me. That's a big, one of the big ones. For an interesting person, university college people. Exactly, exactly. Okay. Even if you're not a research institution, it's your piece, so yeah. Yeah. We have about 10 minutes left, if anyone has any more. Those have been very good questions. Glad I can answer them. Mm-hmm. Absolutely. So, maybe just to kind of fill the silence here so hopefully somebody answers. One thing that's emerged here is I'm hearing some of these questions and the like, you know, it's a question about the smaller organization, questions about networking, questions about meeting people at conferences. One big piece of advice that I would give is no matter what, focus on the current job you have. I mean, keep an eye to the future. You want to know where this is going, but if you do your current job well, opportunities are just going to present themselves. You know, people will see you doing a really good job as an entry-level person and they'll know I can count on that person to do this other thing. So that goes far and that goes for professional organizations. If you're doing, if you're stuffing bags, be the best bag stuff for there is. I mean, just be the best because those are those soft intangibles that people will recognize because if you, for example, let's just say you're stuffing bags because you want to be the chair of a committee one day, you know, five years down the road. If you're just doing a lazy, lax-to-day-school job and you're just stuffing them and you're putting things in the wrong order, people are going to know that as soon as you don't consider a job to be worthy of your time, you're not going to do it well as opposed to, again, if you're just stuffing those bags, if you're putting that much time and attention into something so trivial, you're going to put time and attention to something that's important. So again, you're always on stage, especially in today's, I know this is a cliche and it's trite, but in today's day and age, your social media and you're a Google search away from being discovered, you want to make sure that you've made a positive impression on every single person that you've met and everybody who has seen you because there's a lot more people looking at you than you realize. And I wonder if that sort of migrates to that question. Mackenzie wants to know, I've been an MLIS degree professional for nine years and have been feeling stuck. Any advice for what to do during the tip four? Mackenzie, can you tell me what you do, Mackenzie? Can you put in the chat box what job you have? I mean, without specifics necessarily, but maybe what type of work. Access services. Okay, access service manager. Of course, I have to be an area I know nothing about. What is tip four? But it's, yeah, it's tip four is, it's good, sorry, good advice here. Okay, so you're a manager, so stick to the plan. Okay, that's, I would probably say, Yeah, that's where the flexible comes into play. You have to make a decision for yourself. I don't know your family. I don't know what your goals are. I don't know how happy you are in your specific city. I just, I don't know those things. You're the only one that knows those things and you need to really determine how important is this to me? I see life as a pie chart. And job is a big part of that pie, but it shouldn't be the most important thing. And you have to weigh that against the rest of that pie. Again, you know, do you want to move and look elsewhere? Do you need a particular salary, et cetera. And the only tip I can give is, you know, one is determine what you want to do. Two, look at your plan. If you haven't created one, I mean, if you're an access service manager and you've had nine years of experience post-MLIS, you've had a plan. Yeah, you just maybe don't realize, but maybe take the time after this to write it down. Kind of like what I did, connect the dots, see what you've developed and see if there's anything in your area or anywhere you're willing to go that offers you opportunities. You know, maybe catalog your skills. You may have, you may be an excellent manager at a time. You may have technical skills that maybe are separate from your job. But just essentially, just, I'm trying to think of the right choice of words, but essentially create an inventory. That's the term I was looking for. An inventory of who you are, what skills you bring to the table, and then maybe if need be, look at what else you can do. Maybe there are a lot of graduate certificates now. A lot of ice pools offer 12 credit graduate certificates. You know, if you want to switch gears or if you want to develop a new skill, if that's out of your budget or out of your means, you also might want to look at Coursera. You might want to look at edX. There's a bunch of other platforms that offer, they're called micro degrees now, or micro credentials, where it'll be a lot less expensive than a university would. And again, it just reassess your plan. Just, you know, we're already with your plan. What stage of life are you in and what can I do? And then kind of go back. Sometimes these things are not sequential. Go back to step one and create a new set of goals. Yeah, exactly. What do you mean by feeling stuck? Are you unable to advance where you're working at? Or are you just kind of bogged down in this, the plan that I did have and the job that I'm working towards, it turns out it's not really for me. I mean, it depends on what you mean by what are you stuck at in that. You have your frasier hat on. You have like the frasier ratio. But now that is a good question, but Kent, if you would have mind sharing, maybe, you know, without disclosing anything personal, what exactly you mean by stuck? I'd be gonna give you more specific advice. Unable to advance. Unable to advance, yeah. Okay, then my advice there is, obviously it sounds to me, if you have gone as far as you can in your current job, question one would be, is there another line at your institution that you can transfer over to? It may not even have to be the library world. I know I have to leave the library world full time for a few years, because again, I was able to demonstrate how my skills are transferable. In that case, it was research and assessment skills. And if not, then you know what? We all hit the crossroads. If you're any of the fans of the job or you're at them, you definitely, you may need to look for a job in a different institution. Yeah, exactly. Look at a different institution. And if you want specific advice, maybe reach out to me. You've got my email address, and I can, you know, we can talk about your personal circumstances. But yeah, you have to make that decision. Is it time to move on? Or let's just say that you live in a town that you absolutely love. You have your church there, your civic organizations, your family, your friends. You know, your work isn't everything. If you have this level of happiness that this whole, again, this pie chart is giving you, are you willing to maybe accept the fact that your career path wasn't what you wanted, or is it? You know, maybe it is, because your work is an important part of your job. And I'm definitely a philosopher, if you don't like what you're doing, kind of like what, I'm paraphrasing Steve Jobs in the Stanford commencement speech in 2005. If you're not loving what you do, then you've got to find something else. That's easier said than done, because again, you might have a spouse, you might have kids, and I don't know that you do or not, but look for something you love. I know that was a little general there. Yeah, sorry, yeah. And then Ali has a great question. Yeah, Ali, well, this will be, since we're just hitting about 10, this will be our last one looking for today. What is your opinion of online study library schools, and which one do you think is better than the others? I'm glad you asked. I went to Drexel, and I did my degree online. I would not have been able to get my library degree if it hadn't been available online, just because of my time and the stage of my life where I was at. This, so the online schools are good. I mean, there are several programs, University of Washington, there's, I think, Urbana-Champaign offers, I might be wrong about that, but I know they have some online components, Drexel definitely does. I would definitely look for a reputable institution, and luckily we have ALA accreditation on top of regional accreditation. So ALA is definitely certifying that this is a good program. So I, and I'm an online learning librarian, so I obviously cannot dismiss online education or I'd be out of the job. So our schools are good. In terms of choosing the right one, you have to look at your situation. I love Drexel, but if I could go back, I would not have done Drexel, because Drexel was not the right curriculum for me. I did not know that at the time, and part of that insight has been because of the way my life has taken. I would recommend Drexel, if you have any interest in being an e-librarian and being a digital archiving healthcare, Drexel is the best in the country, healthcare, informatics, and the like, outstanding. If you wanted to be a legal librarian or the like, University of Washington has an outstanding online law librarian program. Chapel Hill, I don't know if they, I don't think they have much of an online component, but there, I would say Chapel Hill, Michigan, Urbana-Champaign are the best for academic librarians just because they teach you how to research, which let me tell you, others do not. I had three credits of research in library school, and that did not prepare me for my job. So the quality of online education is good. Pick the one that works best for you and ask, talk to the advisors, book the curriculum, find alumni from those programs, tell them what it is you want to do, and they can give you a candid reply. Because again, if you were asking me where the Drexel was the right one for you, again, I would say, it would depend on what you're doing. If you describe your job to me, I can give you a really fair assessment over the Drexel is good or not. And I will warn you, at the time that I went to Drexel, it was $1,000 per credit hour. It has only gone up. So that's something worth considering is the cost of it. So if you have a good regional or state school that's offering a library program, you really should look at that because that'll mean they'll be expensive unless you're able to get a scholarship, which in that case, skies will limit. And you were mentioning ALA accreditation. Don't just go to any fly-by-night. ALA actually has, I just search online library master's. They have a searchable database of all the ALA accredited library programs. And you can search by, I'll just look at it now, by particular university, if you know what you're interested in, you can search by state and then you can limit it to online-only programs, a mixture of online person and then specializations if you are specifically one person. I didn't know that existed. I'm looking at it. I did not know that existed. And I would definitely recommend that FSU, I forgot to mention FSU. FSU and Tallahassee is excellent and they're online, them and Drexel partner, they're excellent. So there's a lot of good options. But yeah, I cannot think of one on top of my head, but if there's not an ALA accredited, forgive me, you send me your $30,000, I will just print out on a Word document, I will print out a degree and it'll be worth just as much. But I don't know of any fly-by-night library schools. There are a lot of fly-by-night schools in other fields, especially in business, but I don't know of one in library schools. I think any library school you find will be good, whether it's a good one for you is the question. North Texas, I mean, I'm looking at this list now, now all this is coming up to me. So the University of North Texas is excellent, especially if you want to be in a school librarian or public librarian. FSU is also excellent, especially for technical skills. Drexel's excellent for technical skills, digital research and definitely informatics. And then University of Washington is wonderful for those who want to go down a more legal path and be a law librarian. Although I'll warn you, most law librarian jobs require a law degree, so you have to weigh whether three years and $200,000 of your life is worth it given the income that you'll get. Well, Ellen says her grandfather is a professor at this. Fantastic, oh great, Ellie, there you go, see if you haven't in, you're a legacy student. Okay, well anyway, thank you all so much, we're out of time, but this is not the end of the conversation, you have my information. Yes. Yeah, yeah, there it is. And tell the other 30 people that didn't show up that they missed out. But I'm here, I really, again, given the amount of mistakes I've made and given how frustrating some of the stages my life has been, I really want to help others avoid that path, so feel free to reach out to me and I'll help you in any way I can or at least point you in the right direction. Great, all right, thank you very much. That was awesome, I think a lot of good info and a lot of questions answered that I and everyone's had, but it's, all right. So that will wrap it up for today's show. We'll escape over there again, we'll get out of the slides and we won't do, yeah. All right, hey, that's our library to do website. All right, so that will wrap it up for today's show, it's an Encompass Live into the search there. Encompass Live, luckily so far in the world, nothing else is called a self-encompass live. Yeah, for us. So if you are looking for us, you can Google and find our website. There we go. And it will also be on all the information that you get from me as well. So this is our current sessions. The show has been recorded and will be here in our archives, our main page is where all of our upcoming shows, but our recording will be over here where we have all of our other ones. Here's last week's, which is also UNL people, right? Yeah, you know, we're right down the street. Yeah, it's easy. So I'll link to recording and the presentation, the new up-to-date presentation that Andrew has sent me. Yeah, I will send that, yeah. It will be available there. All of you who attended today and anyone who pre-registered will get an email from me later this afternoon that is available and ready. So that will be up there for you. I hope you'll join us next time when our topic is the solar eclipse. Did you know there's a solar eclipse coming? And the breast is one of the best places to see it. It's coming right through the middle, which is kind of great. From corner to corner, it is coming through. So Mary Sowers, who is our government information services librarian here will be on with us, talk about things that libraries are doing in Nebraska, at least related to the eclipse. We actually ordered 3,000 eclipse glasses that are being distributed to the library commission. They're being distributed to libraries across the state. There's lots of other programs and things going on. She's got a librarian from Seward Memorial Library, making vows with her and she's working on getting some other people along as well. So if you want to find out what you can do at your library, if you don't already have something planned, this is only coming up in a month. But you saw it. And if you're looking to come to Nebraska, to Western Nebraska, to camp, it's probably too late. Yeah. Yeah, it's probably too late because Nebraska really is on an ideal path and we have a very rural Western half of the state, which is going to be full of campers and tents in the next few weeks. Yeah, unless you can find some as well, it's in New York. Exactly. Go to Airbnb. Yeah. So that's our show for next week. So please just sign up for that and any of our other ones we have coming up. I'm always adding, here's August is almost full. You'll see new topics coming in. Also, and come as live is on Facebook. We have a Facebook page there. So if you're a big Facebook user, we'll get there eventually. You can hop over there. See how to remind her today. Don't forget to log in today's show. What are the recordings you're available at Postman here. When your shows are upcoming, add it to the schedule at Postman here. So if you are big on Facebook, do go over there and give us a look. Other than that, that wraps up for today's show. Thank you everyone for attending. Thank you. Thank you, Christa. I'm joining us today. Don't worry. And we'll see you next time on and come as live. Bye.