 So hello and welcome to the School of Library and Information Science Career Colloquia session. My name is Jill Klees and I am the SJSU Career Center Liaison Toothless. And I'd like to thank you for joining me tonight as we have the great pleasure of having Richard Holzer with us tonight to share his journey through his own LIS field. So I'm going to guess that you're going to have a lot of questions for him. I hope so because I think we're going to learn some very interesting things. So let's go ahead and get started and I'm going to hand it off to Richard and I will get off of the microphone and hand it off. So here we go. Hi there and thanks Jill for the introduction. I'm Richard Holzer and I'm going to talk to you a little bit about how I came to be where I am today. So I decided to call this, exploring your opportunities, what's at the end of the rainbow because we're all looking for that magic job we all will love and we'll get the right money for in the right place and all that kind of good stuff. Well, you know, that's what we look for. So my current job is Chief Librarian at the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles County here in Los Angeles and I'm going to talk a little bit about how I got there. Oh, we'll just go ahead and one of the key things you'll want to think about is that the profession is about connecting. We're connecting people to information, information to people, people to people. I always like to talk about us as connectors and most people seem to get that. So, you know, keep that in mind as you look at where you're at today and where you're going and, you know, it's a good guide piece. The other thing that I want you to keep in mind is that there's an explosion of opportunities everywhere and, by the way, this is a picture I took. This is of the beaches of Malibu at the sunset and just kind of look good. So, you know, all the pictures here are either of me or by me, so they're all within copyright, so just know that. Okay, so lots of opportunities in lots of different places and I want to think about being really creative about what works for you and that library is absolutely an excellent thing, but it can mean many things and it can be the underpinnings or it can be the overt piece of what you do every day. And I'll talk about that. There are pathways to where you have gotten to today, to the present, and there are pathways to the future. And as this photo represents, there's many intricate ways to go from one to the next and some are direct and some are not so direct and that's okay. In the old days, it would be I want to be such and such senior person in an organization and in order to get there, I have to do this for three years, this for two years, this for five years, move over to here for two years, et cetera. Well, that's all well and good. I never really followed that myself and you don't need to today. You won't be looked down upon if that's the case. On the other hand, it's perfectly fine to be within an organization over time if you're always growing, always challenging yourself, always learning and that's a key thing. So before I get to who I am and how I got to where I am, I want to know a little bit about you. So I'm going to ask you to raise your hand and tell me how many of you are recent college graduates and are right, went right into your master's program. It looks like we have four of you out of the just about 30 folks on the call. Okay. How many of you are transitioning to a new career from a career you've already had doing something else? About 14 of you, so quite a number of you. Okay. How many of you have had library work experience in the past or are currently working in a library situation of some sort that looks like about a third of you there for that? Okay. Very interesting. So we've got quite a mix of people with experience and either going directly through their education or transitioning. A lot more people transitioning and, you know, that's happened for many years. So that's not that unusual. I know the circumstances of this day and age challenges to do that. So, all right. Moving on. So let's talk about me because that's what, that'll be fun. Okay. So first of all, I'm one of those unusual people with a science undergraduate degree. So how about this? How many of you actually have a science or technical degree, either undergraduate or graduate? Okay. About, I'm seeing about six of you. Okay. Good. Most of the people I encounter have an English or social sciences or humanities or liberal arts background who get into library science. And there's very few of us who will have the science background. So that'll come into importance in just a minute. You'll see. I also, I received my degree at Stony Brook University in Long Island, New York. And I have a Master of Education in Instructional Technology and Instructional Product Development from Utah State University. And between those two time periods, I took a year to do something else. And I'll tell you about that in a minute. And then after I got my MED, I ended up, that was in Utah State University. And I ended up working as a librarian, even though it's not an ALA accredited degree for a couple of years. And then I went back to school and got my ALA accredited degree from the University at Denver, and it's an MA in librarianship and information management, records management specifically. So that is quite a combo. And from a professional standpoint over the next bunch of years, I've been a member of SLA, the Special Libraries Association, ALA on and then off and then back on again. And ASIS, or ASIS these days, and the ARLIS, which is the Art Library Society of North America, and some others. So, and I encourage you to really think about, especially as students, to join associations of library associations or other kinds of associations that are of personal interest to you or potentially professional interest because that is critical for getting jobs and moving forward. And I know we'll talk more about that later. But I wanted to put that in there right now. So, okay, so as a student, very eclectic background, you'll get a kick out of some of these pictures, I think, when I was younger. The first one up there is me as an undergraduate work-study student who just happened to get a job in the, my major, my library, the departmental library for my major. And that was great. So, I got to meet a lot of people coming in and out, such as this grad student. I wonder what she's doing these days. That was so long ago. But that was in the Earth and Space Sciences Library, which is now our graduate student lounge, I understand. But anyway, so I went to school, got my degree, didn't want to be stuck in a lab, didn't like going out in the rain as a geologist. So, I wasn't sure, but I was studying to be an educator and did get a project at the American Museum of Natural History to do a volunteer independent study. And that set me off on my career because I thought, well, that is fun. So, however, and I applied to George Washington University, got in, but couldn't afford it. So, did other stuff. And I was living in New York City. So, what did I do? I became a dance instructor for Arthur Murray. And I'm telling you this because your general outside interest absolutely play a role in your profession in some ways. And you'll understand that in a few minutes. So, that's me in the middle there with one of my students, Mary Washington, who was at Governess out on Long Island at the time and working for Arthur Murray's as you can see in the background. So, I learned a lot. And actually, that helped me make money later when I went on to go back to school and get my first master's degree at Utah State and make money at night teaching classes while I was working during the day. I was also a graduate assistant in the curriculum library at Utah State University's main library and had a chance to work with the first microcomputers back in, yes, back in 1977 through 79. So, that's how old I am. But that was critical also because I got introduced to technology, this new technology and its use in education and libraries. And I had a supervisor at the time who was really good at writing grants. So, I understood what the value was of being able to write a good grant proposal. And as it says, I was doing some community work and teaching dance while I was, you know, trying to feed myself and go to school at the same time. And then I also did some community work with, just as a grad student, I would go out and tell kids at the local schools they had a great communications program with the local community and go out and teach them about dinosaurs because I had that background and fossils and graphic arts because that was what we were learning. And so, that's me teaching them, these kids. And they had a great time and that was a lot of fun. And so, there I was. And then I went on to get a graduate internship at IBM when I was working on my second master's. And that's what we'll talk about now. So, from a professional pathway, so I received my first master's degree at Utah State, got a job in a little tiny community college in Ephraim, Utah, and was there for only three years, but was the assistant librarian where there was only two professionals, actually three officially, because in those days there was a learning resources program, which was a new concept, and so we did everything. And as assistant librarian, I learned to do everything. And after two years, when my boss left to pursue other things, I was lucky enough to be selected to be the director of the library. So, at a very young age, I was a director. I served on committees, statewide committees in the state of Utah with all the big shots at the University of Utah, BYU, et cetera. So, great experience, great opportunity early on, and got to attend the Utah Educational Library, Media Association, Utah Library Association, and got to network with people and get to know what they did for a living and that kind of thing. Then I went on to learn this new thing called searching, and I went to the University of Denver, moved to Denver, got a great internship at IBM Boulder, and worry about them with all of the different weather problems they've been having lately, having lived in those neighborhoods, and, but it was great because I got paid, which is unusual these days, I know, and even then, but I got paid professional wages as an intern and helped me get through school and got professional experience, which actually led to a job, which is not a promise that any institution can make to you, but it got me great experience and exposure, and while I was there, I applied for these scholarships for these things, these travel grants I never heard of, for Special Libraries Association, and for the Association of Research Managers, are my rather, and I got them both, which was amazing, one paid my way to the SLA meeting in New Orleans, where I got to meet all the IBM librarians I had communicated with, from my internship, and also I got to write an article that was published by the ARMA Scholarship, and my professors were very encouraging and helped me through to apply for those, so I encourage you to do the same thing. I was able to get the internship at IBM, why? Because I was exposed at Utah State to all those microcomputer things, and that 1982, the first IBM microcomputer was made and was put in the library, and my boss said, well, I know you're not a programmer, but you'll figure out what we can do with this new thing called computers, microcomputers in the library, so that's what I did for a project, and it was great. So then I went on from there and was hired as a full-time employee of IBM, and I worked in the library for three years, but I spent 18 years in IBM, and next screen I'll show you what I did, but I spent 18 years there, left there, to work for a documentary company out in Los Angeles here, which is how I got here, and Infotreve at the time worked there for a couple of years, changed jobs over to Amgen, which is a biotech company and was the senior manager for libraries there, but I should mention while I was at Infotreve, I wasn't in a library, I was working as behind the scenes for a vendor basically to coordinate incorporation of databases from all the different publishers, all their content into a central database for our clients to access, and our main clients were law and medical and science scientific companies for the most part, or big organizations that needed interlibrary loan in essence, but from a corporate standpoint. Great experience there. I went then to Amgen and worked in a more traditional library, but there we changed that library from a typical library with some electronic information to very much a very electronic dependent organization, and that was great, and that's the picture on the lower left, the oval shape, that's the Amgen library there at the time, and we, Amgen was one of many of those companies that T-shirts were big deals, that's why you see them hanging in there for one of our open houses, and then I left there and did some consulting work with my own company, among other things, got to go to New Zealand and teach for a few days, their library associate, on behalf of their library association workshops on technologies and libraries, and then decided to move on and got this great job at the Natural History Museum here in Los Angeles. So, moving on, here's a listing of just, well, most of the titles I had. So, when I was at Snow College in Ephraim, Utah, I was assistant librarian, then library director, then left and was a graduate intern at IBM, which on the right-hand side of the screen you see the jobs, and that was in Boulder. When I was hired, I was hired as a senior research librarian in East Fish Hill, New York, near Poughkeepsie. After a few years, they had opportunities to redeploy people in different places, and I became a marketing representative trainee, and that building on the right is in downtown Manhattan, right on Fifth Avenue and 57th Street, and I was on the 29th floor working with a great team of people. Our clients were medical education and federal accounts, and I was responsible to help all those wonderful people understand what libraries and academia did for a living and what museums did. So, I got to do work with people, but from a company standpoint offering them products and services and did lots of interesting things we can talk about later at this time. But from there, I spent many years, and I had various jobs helping the marketing teams, not only in New York City at first, but then across the United States, was promoted to work globally as an advisory industry rep and academic specialist and eventually, IBM reinvented itself, and I was part of the consulting group within IBM, working with higher education and libraries and museums, and had there some fantastic opportunities to work with the Vatican. I didn't get to go to the Vatican, but I got to work with them to go to India for several days and consult with them on the use of information and other stuff like that. And I ended up, my last job or parts of my job were with software product development, and a product you'll know today if you look for it is called IBM Content Manager, which was a combination of being able to do digital imaging, digital sound, digital motion pictures along with text, which was unusual back in the 1990s, but certainly no big deal today, relatively speaking. So after I left there, as I said, I went to as Content Development Director at Infantry, had my own company, I still do, then was a Senior Manager of Digital Initiatives at Amgen, and eventually for information services in that same organization, and then over to my Chief Librarian job. So yes, I am an old-fashioned Chief Librarian, but I'm certainly not only doing library, typical work, but also in the digital world doing a lot like that. So okay, now stuff that you really want to know is what do you need to know? What kind of skills do you need so you can get a job and be successful in this profession and its related pieces? And this long list of stuff is something to look forward to achieve. It doesn't mean you should have it up front. By any means, it's stuff that you learn on the job in many cases. That's a picture of me as the Chair of the SciTech Division of SLA because I put that there because one of the key ways you'll learn is doing. And one of the great ways to do that is to get active in a professional association where it's honestly, it should be, it's not, you get your job if you make mistakes, it's okay, of course, it's not great when things go bad, but you know, it's everyone's a volunteer typically. You learn how to work with people, you learn how to lead projects, you learn lots of things, you get connections. And people get to know what you can do, what kinds of capabilities you have, what your interests are. And that's honestly the way I've gotten to hear about opportunities and I've been able to tell people about people I know to get them opportunities. And it's worked innumerable times. And when people tell you, oh, I don't go to annual conferences or I don't go to conferences because my institution doesn't pay, I find that unacceptable. My own opinion, I know everyone has economic challenges, but it's your career, you're investing in, it's a lifelong thing. And if you really want to be successful, you want to invest in yourself. And one of the key ways you can is to be a active member of a professional association. And you decide which one. I happen to be very active in SLA have been for more than 30 years. And it's been very useful. ALA I'm a member, I've been active a little bit here and there in LITA, but not as much because for me that for what my particular objectives and learning is, it's not really key, but it's helpful. But for others, it is their core or IFLA, which is a very big thing for somebody doing international work. So just think about that, but okay. So some of the key skills in you, certainly core library training. Your education is critical. Build on that with internships, paid is always great, but volunteer stuff, such as at my place here, are great opportunities to really understand how it really happens. Content knowledge or specialties, if you happen to have an undergraduate or a graduate degree in a particular subject arena, that's very helpful because depth as well as breadth is good. Everybody's aware and uses technology. It just depends on how facile you are and how interested you are in being. If you want to be a programmer, some people are really good at that. I'm not, but some people are. Do it, be a technological librarian. Why not? You get paid well and it's a great job. On the other hand, it's good to know how to use it, and that's the way I do things. I know how to use it, so when I talk to the IT people, I know what's going on, and you get exposure to that at all sorts of places. Learn budgeting, learn management and leadership. In organizations, there's training programs. I was lucky enough to be at IBM where they had incredible training. I didn't go through their formal management training, but I went through a lot of other training, and it was really very helpful. Communication, learning how to speak, whether it's one-on-one, one-on-four, one-on-fifty, one-on-one-thousand, which gets into public speaking. Again, professional associations, local and international, national good opportunities to get that practice in. Negotiation, you're always negotiating. You're negotiating with your kids, you're negotiating with your siblings, you're negotiating with your parents, you're negotiating with your bosses, you're negotiating with the person that you're buying stuff from. Good practice, good learning. I wasn't good at it. I'm still okay. I do pretty good at many things, but other things, it's always learning, project management, everything in libraries is projects, learn how to do that, be, if you're detail-oriented, great. That's one kind of thing that's really helpful. If you can also be a strategic or big picture person, that's also good. But know what your capabilities are. I was on a team of three, with three other librarians at IBM, where we were the corporate library team for the global marketing group in early the 1990s, where each of us had a very special capability that we brought to the table. One of us was a very strategic thinker. That wasn't me. One of us was good at detail and from management of projects and events and things like that, another had other capabilities as far as writing and then there was somebody like me who was much more into the technology side and analysis side of things. And so the four of us together, it was a team and did we always have disagreements? Sure, but we were professionals about it. We got to get along. We got the job done and we were very successful for a couple of years and we were lifelong friends ever since, even when we went off in different directions. So that was great. And then be able to have focus, but also be able to, I know multitasking is questionable in some arenas as to whether they're ever an ability to do multitasking. But be able to know that you have several balls in the air that you're trying to balance. And whether it's home and work, work and work pieces, but just know when focus is needed and how you best operate in focus and when multitasking or multiple projects that need to be addressed can be managed because that's really important. Okay. Education and training, it crosses all sectors. You might be in corporate worlds, you might be in other arenas, you might be in academia, but you're always going to be educating and or training folks about use of library resources or information literacy or such as in lower left. I was involved in helping the education and training department in Amgen to create some modules for some of our people using lab notebooks. And that's a snapshot of a multi-module that people could learn online instead of coming into a classroom on how to certify themselves on proper use and training of lab notebooks according to the corporate rules and regulations. I'm not giving away any corporate secrets. A lot of corporations do this kind of thing. But I also got to use my acting skills and my training, not in dance, but to help do that and that my colleague there, he was also, he's a scientist by background, not a librarian, but he worked in the library because scientists do work in some corporate libraries. And on the right, I would happen to have a chance to teach a class in Hawaii or give a class. So that was kind of fun already. So social media, one of the key questions is, okay, what about this thing called LinkedIn and how is it useful, can it get me a job? And it brought up some really key points I wanted to talk to you about regarding social media for job hunting and how to do that and what's useful. So to answer, the short answer to LinkedIn is it's an arena to get to know what's out there, to do some investigation on backgrounds of people, on backgrounds of companies, beyond what's on their web pages that give you an inkling as to what they're all about, does it actually produce jobs? I've heard it can, but in my experience, it's certainly a tool. There's no panacea, but I use LinkedIn for all my professional contacts. Whereas Facebook, for the most part, I use it for my own personal contacts and I'm about to restructure it. So any folks who try to friend me on Facebook, if I usually refer them to LinkedIn unless they happen to be more than just professional friends. And so I'll be adjusting that soon with some of my colleagues and they'll know why. And that just keeps it separate. So I have lots of contacts all over the world on LinkedIn. And when I need to know about something, I just, I can email them through LinkedIn. I may not have their personal email or their work email, but through LinkedIn I can contact them. Example, I'm preparing to give a major talk this week at my museum on a topic. And I needed to, I happened to know the CEO of a software company for visualization of search results that, and I wrote to him through LinkedIn because I didn't have his current business address. And he sent me the information I needed so I could use it in my presentation. I mean, that is great. So it's not a job that I got, but I got great professional collegial help. So there you go. So whereas Facebook is good for your social stuff. Now I'm going to jump on that in just a minute. But first I want to tell you, okay, what do you include in your profile? Really think about if you were to talk to somebody in a professional capacity, what would you want them to know? And that's what you put in your LinkedIn profile. And look at a lot of other people's profiles. Look at how they describe themselves. It's very action-oriented. What did you, what did you bring to the table? It's not I was responsible to do this, I did this, I did this. It's I was able to increase ourselves this percentage. Or in our case, I was able to be a significant factor in a research project that enabled somebody to get an award in our company, or in our university. Or, you know, those kinds of things. So read a bunch of people's profiles. Even people you have no idea about. And that's also a place for you, one of the key questions was what kind of keywords do I use in looking for jobs? Look at places where you think you'd like to work. Look at all the people who work there. Look at what kind of job titles they have. Look at how they describe the jobs they do. When I was looking for a job in the early days, that wasn't available. I had to talk to people to find out about that. Now you can read about it. Some good, some, hmm, and you can also look at their blogs and things like that. Great opportunity to do some stealth investigation. And it's also a good place to look if you're applying for a job at a particular organization to see more about maybe the people who are interviewing you. And that's a great place to do that. So think about that. But now be careful about what you post while applying for a job or interviewing in the interview process. We all are very excited to tell our families, oh my goodness, I'm applying for this job at such and such a place. And it would be a great job, and it sounds really good. And I'm perfect for it, all this kind of stuff. But you know what? Because Facebook changes so much, be careful. And all the other Twitter and all the other places that have social media type things because you don't know who's friend of a friend of a friend is going to read what you say. So if you say I'm applying to such and such a job, somebody might be from that organization reading that. And that's okay if you're saying good things. But then again, there's not too much you want to give away because A, you didn't get the job yet. And if you want to say, gee, I really nailed that interview. I'm a shoe in for the job. They might be reading it saying, well, they think so, but not so much. Or what makes them think that it was? On the other hand, you might say gee, I really blew it. And they may think you did a great job. So they're saying, maybe I should rethink it. So don't give them that opportunity. Left is more and what I would suggest you use is the messaging, private email, talk to them on the phone, the old fashioned way, and talk to your friends and relatives and say, you know what, I have this great prospect for a job. I'd rather, you know, let's see how it goes. And I'll keep you informed on how I'm doing. But I'll give you the details after it's all over. You know, sometimes we just got to keep it closer to the chest. And that's what I would suggest. And I've counseled a few people recently saying, don't name names. You really may want to rethink that because it turns out in one case, the person who they interviewed with, they left for another job. And that person isn't the person who they would be working for after all. And in fact, they didn't get that particular job, not for that reason, but for other reasons. They were a great candidate. But so you just don't know. You just don't know the circumstances. And also, things take time. Companies, both being an interviewee and an interviewer, there are processes that take time. So it could take as long as several months for you to know the answer. So just keep that in mind and be patient and be diligent. And even when you think you've got to lock on a job, and even if they verbally said you have it, until you are signed, sealed, and working that first day, you don't know that that's going to happen. I was in a situation several years ago in a corporation where we had offered the job and then we got a budget cut. And we had to resend the job offer. It happens. These days, it's more often than not. So it's a weird thing to happen. Look at, you know, with all the stuff with the government these days in the U.S. So just keep that in mind, but be diligent. Be patient. Don't get discouraged. Talk to your colleagues. Talk to your friends. Talk to mentors if you've got one. Get one. When you go to these professional meetings, you get to know people. Ask them about their jobs, what it's like from an information standpoint. Also, know you're always interviewing. When you're meeting people in these association meetings, even casually, you're on. Just like, you know, the politicians or the celebrities to say, is this off the record to a press person? Uh-uh. It's never off the record. They'll know you. So just, you know, you don't have to be always dressed up, but just treat the opportunity in a respectful way. Try to rethink things. Oh, don't overthink it, but, you know, just use those opportunities. So, again, keywords for job search. Look at what other people use. If you really want to work in a library, then use that. But think about every possible combination of information management, knowledge management, data analyst, you know, look at all sorts of things out there and what people are being called because the functions of what they do may be librarian, but they may be called researcher or analyst or something else. And, you know what, that's okay too. It just depends on what, not. And being called a librarian is perfectly fine if it works for you and it works in your organization. But don't stick like glue to it if the opportunity is there and it just happens to be called something else. Alrighty. Advice for now in the future. Number one, focus on your needs right in the middle of that set of gears. Focus on what your needs are and be realistic with yourself. What kind of salary are you looking for? What kind of geographic situation you have or restriction you have so that, you know, keep an open mind as I say on the left there, but with different kinds of opportunities. But know what you're looking for and know your needs so that you really focus in on things. And focus on functional capabilities, what you can do from a function standpoint and what skill set you have. And that means everything, you know, the fact that I happen to know entertainment through my dance background and all that, that came in handy with conversations with academics that had those kind of programs and were using technology, believe it or not, all sorts of things. So know what you bring to the table and know what kind of characteristics, gee, you're outgoing or you're detail oriented, you know, all that kind of stuff. Be open, be flexible. Sometimes means to an end is you get one kind of job, but it has great opportunities to do other things. And I don't know, I have learned, I try not to say no. I say, well, tell me more about this or tell me how this, what you think I can bring to the table to make this project more successful or gee, you know, there's this project and I think I can really add to that for them. It's not my core responsibility, but let's just see what the opportunities are. Stick to things that are interesting to you. What's the old adage? If you do something you love, you'll never work a day in your life. Well, you know, there was a point to that. If you really like what you're doing, it's not work, it's interesting stuff. And then above all, as you heard me say throughout this session today, network, network, network, locally with your classmates, with your professional colleagues today and tomorrow, with the vendors. The person on the other side of the conversation may be at, you know, some local or national meeting, a vendor of publications or what not. They might have a library degree. In fact, they probably do, even if they don't. You might be working for them or working for a similar organization. There's lots of opportunities like that, and it's not the evil empire. It's a great opportunity to know and learn and also earn some good money. It's a different situation. I've been on both sides of that, and it's great. So that's a great opportunity. So at this time, we can open it up for Q and A. You're welcome to type your questions into the chat box, and I'll help keep an eye on that. I'll also let go of the microphone, and if anybody wants to pick up the mic, just raise your hand, and we can click off the mic, and that way you can click on. Actually, there's your first question in the chat box, Richard. It's from Kristen. What skills do you need to be an academic librarian? Yeah. Okay. Skills for an academic librarian. That, there's a couple of things about that. One is you, you know, a lot of situations, if you're in a university setting, you need to be able to communicate with students and be able to, therefore, teach or train, usually teach, because an academic situation is a lot of big focus in my experience has been you're there to, it's just like somebody who fishes. You can feed them, but if you teach them how to fish, then they'll feed them themselves, and this is what you're doing is you're feeding them skills on how, in learning, on how to do research and how to use technology for their future. So that's one aspect of skills. The other is to be able to write if you're going to be in a tenure-track position. You're going to have to publish to get tenure. You're going to have to speak at conferences. I know that it's good if you run for an elected office or get appointed to committees, so you'll need to get involved with that kind of thing. That's a skill from a communication standpoint, and those are some general points. If there's something more specific, I do know that what you need from a credential standpoint is a lot of jobs in academia. They'll either say starting an introductory library job, they'll expect a library degree from ALA accredited institution or not, believe it or not, and summary may require a language capacity, maybe two languages. They may require another subject degree and things like that. So those are some of the kinds of requirements that you have. Okay, I see, wow, okay, now we're getting questions. Okay, I'm going to read them. The next, I hope that answers your question, and I can be more specific if you have something particular that you want on the academic librarianship part. What are the kinds of institutions of research librarian positions? A lot. I was a research librarian at IBM. I was responsible to support the research and development of products that were the brains of the biggest computers that IBM made at the time. I was a research librarian or part of a team of research librarians. At AMGEN where we did research on drugs and medicines and medical devices and other kinds of things to help us keep us healthy and get through whatever challenges, health challenges that, for the products that they have. There's also places like where I work, museums, government agencies have research analysts, lots of them, the military, the FBI, yes, believe it or not, they do have them. If you go on USAjobs.gov, they just revamped that a couple of years ago. There's some really interesting variety of jobs. I know this week is not a great one to really think about that, but in general, let's see what other kind of institutions, lots of different kind of corporates, small and big, sometimes you get to create a library. Even today, my good colleagues have helped build libraries at corporations like Apple and Sun Microsystems. The Federal Reserve has libraries, lots of different kinds of research library positions. Let's see, I've been working in web marketing and my interest flies in digital asset management. Okay, whether in a traditional library or in a corporate environment, can you suggest some career names or paths? Digital archivist, digital asset manager, digital librarian, digital technologist, technology librarian, let's see, that's just a couple. We have, we're working on digital asset management here across the enterprise. And, you know, that's part of the fabric of all of what we do these days, whether it's in a small situation or in a big one. So, those are some of the paths there and that gives you an idea. What advice would you give to someone who wants to open their own information research business? Talk to people who already have them. Talk to Mary Ellen Bates. Talk, join AIIP, the Association for Independent Information Professionals. A great bunch of people. I was a member of that group for several years and still talk with a lot of them. Talk to Deb Hunt, who's the current president of SLA, who's been an independent consultant. There's several books that Mary Ellen has written about doing it. There's a lot of different things on her website, among others. These are just examples of people who I've met over time and talked to them about that. And they'll tell you the good, bad, and the ugly about doing it. There's some great opportunities for the right kind of people to open up their own business. And lots of variety. There's one of the students from your program. She graduated not that long ago and she was thinking about, you know, I want to help people in the entertainment business because she had some background in it, manage their personal libraries. How would I do that? Well, it just so happened she happened to know somebody who knew somebody who needed some help so she got two independent contracts. And I said, you know, you might want to consider opening up your own business because you seem to be doing it pretty well. And she's thinking, she's still thinking about it because she's been successful at it. And I've had my own business and my focus was on technology strategy managing, management consulting, which is what I did when I was working for IBM. And I've done it independently in different places. I teach people about that and I teach workshops on it. So you can talk to me a little bit. But if you want to get into the information or research business directly, talk to the people I mentioned and investigate AIIP, like I said. And that'll get you started right away. Okay. Watching the clocks, I want to make sure I leave enough time for these other questions. I've tried looking it up, but the term special collections as it relates to libraries. What I'm finding seems vague and you give some examples on what it real, that really means. Special collections, I use the term here, are a group of things that together represent an entity. How's that for vague? Okay. So a special collections librarian, there are such things in academia, typically, or in cultural institutions such as a museum because there is an area called special collections. Sometimes it's archives. You might want to look under archives for that. And the Society for American Archivists, SAA, is another association to look into if you're interested in that kind of thing. You might want to look at special collections, let's see what other terms have been used. I'm running the blank just temporarily. But look at it in the broader context. Look at, excuse me, major, larger institutions that probably have a rare books collection or a special collections area or an archive. Because chances are either they have a sister organization or a subgroup or they are part of a bigger group called special collections, it kind of varies. And so that's what I would suggest on that. And also you spoke that it's good to know other languages. Do you speak other languages? Well, I took Spanish as in high school and in college. I took a year of reading German and I have sporadically studied a little bit when I went to Japan and China. I took those little audio courses. And honestly, I used a big bird, goes to Japan, a videotape. Yes, you can laugh, but it worked. It taught me just basics about that. So I'm not good at it. If you happen to be good at it, that's great. My collection has every alphabet and every language you can imagine because we have an exchange program with over almost 600 institutions. And it comes in and sometimes it has absolutely no speck of English or regular or I should say American recognized numbers. So it's a challenge. So I rely on my wonderful grad student volunteers and interns to who happen to know these other languages and they've been very helpful or my colleagues who happen to read three and four languages. Okay, so but what I would suggest is if you have an affinity for it, check into it. Because these days learning more than one language really helps. And by the way, sign language, American sign language, I took a class briefly. I wasn't able to finish it because of other things going on at the time. But American sign language or computer languages in the broad sense of the sense of it are also good to know depending upon your interests. Thank you for your thoughts, Richard. What is your approach, suggestions, what networking? Whether at a happy hour or at a conference. I'm an established professional but I still find it hard to network with peers. Most folks ask me for a job so I am at a point of avoiding these events. Well, you know, people are going to ask me, they ask me all the time and I say, you know what, right now I have no budget and my boss reiterated that yesterday. He says, the staff you have which is you is it. That doesn't mean that's going to be forever but as far as we know right now that's it. But I don't let it depress me too often. What you need to do is just take, know that if you're working, you're going to be asked about job opportunities and that's okay. Just say, you know what, check our website, check with our HR department. There's nothing at the moment but if this, my organization is the kind of one that you're interested in, look into it. What I try to do and I'm still, I was at an event, a social event the other night, you just got to take a deep breath, walk up to somebody you don't know and say, hi, tell me about what you do for a living or what you do that interests you. At a professional conference, look at their badge, be overt about it. Just say, you know, my eyes are bad. I'm just wondering who you are and what you work for and just be polite about it. If the person is really, really busy or not interested, you know, move on. Say, oh, thank you for your time and move on. If you do get to meet with somebody, don't overstep your time. Speak with them a few minutes. If it seems to be going well, that's fine. One of the key things that I learned on a webinar one time was when you see another person, introduce that, bring that person along. I do this all the time. Say, oh, do you know so-and-so? Meet so-and-so and then casually let yourself out of the conversation and move on to the next one. That way, they don't feel usurped and you feel like you're getting to know more people. And that really works very well. And that's what I would suggest and I know we're running out of time. Let me see. I have been thinking about blending the MIS with genealogy. Have you heard of anything similar to this? Yeah. There are people who happen to like to do that a lot. I'm doing my own little things for my family who doesn't. But I haven't heard of anything very specific. But I check into some different aspects of organizations that have genealogy meetings and stuff like that. And you know what? When I was at Utah State, I was at a product development track of my master of education. Museums were not really something they did. But when I did all my class projects, I just focused on museum-type stuff. So, because that was my interest. I didn't know I was going to be a librarian at a museum, honestly. I thought I was going to be an educator. But here I am. But what I do is I focus my project. So when you're working through your MIS, there's no reason why you can't do a bibliographic or cataloging class project or a develop a plan for a genealogical library. Whatever, and just focus that way. I'm very interested in museum librarianship. And in fact, I'm also interested in museum studies. Graduate program, usually more important to have an MLIS or advanced degree in museum field or discipline. No, their museum studies programs are a bit different because they look at the broad aspects of exhibits, education, administration, as well as collections management. Whereas, MLISs are really involved with what libraries and archives and special collections do. They are very synergistic. They are very complementary. I know I have one student volunteer right now who has a museum studies degree who's now working on her MLIS. They fold over each other. It wouldn't hurt in your master's program to investigate. I don't know what San Jose has as far as the breadth of classes, but they have quite a variety. And take a class in museum studies if it's offered or something like that, or just take a workshop. That's another way to do that. And it gives you a leg up or a leg in. The other thing you can do is like a lot of graduates from your, or people in your program, they come and work for me as a volunteer or as a formal intern for credit. And they get experience in a museum, in a library. So they get the best of both worlds and get to understand how they interact. So that's, and you could do that wherever you're physically located, whether in a small place or a large, and we're almost out of time. But let's see, are there some good position names to be aware of when looking for positions in a museum library? Well, librarian, museum librarian, true. Sometimes it depends on the size of the organization. Some of them are big enough like the Smithsonian or the American Museum where they have the cereals librarian who happens to be at the institution. So what you should do is look at the websites of those institutions, go to where the library is, go to the career segment, go to the staffing segment, see what the people are called in those institutions, whether big or small. And then look around and see, there are museums at academic institutions, by the way. And there's museums that offer academic degrees, some of them. Ours doesn't, but at the moment. But so that's another way to do it. And I guess we're out of time, so I hope that was helpful. Let me just go to the very last page, and that's my blog and that's my award from SLA I got one year, and so I just wanted to show it off, but, and I was spotlight, there was an interview with me by the Royal Society last year, this past year in January rather, and there's, you can go to my website, my blog, and click on it and read it. And send me an email if you have any further questions. So thank you, Richard. That was fabulous. I love how you moderate all those questions. You're such a wealth of information to be able to switch back and forth and answer all the student questions. So thank you so much for your time.