 Welcome to our Leadership and Management Q&A with advisors. Today's workshop is part of our Pathways series introducing the different MLIS career pathways. Where you'll get an insight perspective from instructors who have worked in specific fields. So let's get started with the agenda. Today's agenda consists of an overview of the leadership and management pathway, which courses students can consider, why, how students use a skill set, and then we'll meet faculty with expertise in this area who have made themselves available to answer your questions. So what is leadership and management? If you look at the screen, there are different resources. There's the Lama Association. Here's a list of core theory and knowledge that students pursuing the pathway would benefit from and building skill sets or a career in this area. So planning strategically for improved services and support to realize organizational goals. Plan and understand budgets. Demonstrate ability to be an effective advocate for organizations and employees. And work effectively in teams, including virtually. Foundational and recommended courses such as these. There's info 287 seminar and information science with the topic of collecting and analyzing data for evidence based decisions. In the recommended courses side. There's info 246 info 234 and a couple others. So now we'll turn it over to Sheila. Thanks so much, Taryn. So the Library and Leadership Management Association, which is now part of ALA's core, created these 14 foundational competencies for library leaders and managers. So one approach for students to think about who are pursuing this pathway is to add a new tab into your student success planner. And then you could strategically build a checklist from which you may inventory and map your own skills in these leadership and management areas. Whether that's from your iSchool classes taken from the pathways or perhaps your own workplace or internship or volunteer projects. You could even take this a step further and possibly add the IMLS core competencies to this self assessment inventory. So think about how powerful a self inventory system like this could be as you prepare to go out for the job search or to seek a promotional opportunity where you work. And I just added in some samples here in blue or courses I thought that aligned well with the foundational competencies from Lama. And then I added in some suggested ideas that could be brought in from volunteer or work experience. So you can get the idea. Now, why take leadership and management classes? Because these skills are in demand. If you were to take the exercise a step further, while you're working in the program, you could start to research leadership and management job descriptions in the target areas where you would like to work in a management role, including in your own workplace. Luckily, much of this analysis work has already been done for you in the form of the iSchools annual MLIS Skills at Work Report. This 2022 report just released includes this special nugget on page 11, where the top three general skills mentioned in the 400 jobs that were analyzed were communication at 71% diversity, equity and inclusion at 62% and managerial skills in 60% of the positions. So I urge everyone to please download the free report from our website and start to use this as you move forward. So you will see that jobs were analyzed by both job function and by library type, such as academic libraries, K-12 libraries, legal, medical and public libraries, as well as nonprofit settings. Now, one of the key takeaways from the report was the following advice. 96% of job hosts either require or prefer candidates with work experience. So if you can, try to fit in an Info294 in-person or virtual for credit internship into your MLIS program or volunteer somewhere to develop these skills. Don't forget to tap into all the career supports and the other resources that the iSchool has put into place for MLIS students. A good way to organize your efforts is to make use of our career planning checklist, which is included inside your student success planner. In this way, you can set goals and personal milestones specific to your own career objectives. And now you have the opportunity to hear some tips and recommendations from experts in this pathway. So two of iSchool's pathway advisors, Associate Director Dr. Linda Main and Dr. Sue Allman are here with us today, as well as our iSchool career advisor, Kim Doherty. Now, first they will introduce themselves and let you know a little bit about their background with leadership and management positions and perhaps some lessons learned from leadership roles in their careers. As well as some specific tips on iSchool courses or extracurriculars or perhaps service opportunities that they would like to recommend to you. And then we will be opening the floor for Q&A. So I think that's your turn, Dr. Main. Hey, thanks very much, Sheila. And hi, everybody. I'm Linda Main and I'm the Associate Director currently of the school and also the graduate coordinator. And when I was thinking about this, I actually thought of three points in my career where I got involved heavily with management issues. And I thought I'd just mentioned those briefly and then tell you what, when I look back on it, what it told me about myself. First of all, I worked for many years in the library of Trinity College in Dublin and one of the jobs that I worked in a lot of different units there. And one of the jobs that I worked in was to do with automation at the time. They were just beginning a very big automation project and I was brought on as the sort of number two person, the assistant to the person who was overseeing the project. And my task was to manage the day-to-day things of the project and to implement various automation activities that we were doing and manage the various teams under me. And then having done that for a while, I then moved into what I really enjoyed doing, which was I moved into what here in the States we call the special collections area. It's actually called rare books and manuscripts in many UK libraries and Irish libraries. And that's what it was called in Trinity College Dublin. And there again, I went in as the number two person, as the associate person responsible for the day-to-day running off the department. And to making sure that various exhibits were handled and implementing the vision of the person who was leading that department. In fact, there was two of them, one responsible for manuscripts and one responsible for rare books and they didn't like each other and they used to fight. So it was an interesting and challenging position. And then many years later, I ended up here at San Jose State and have been the associate director, which again is the number two position. And again, with a lot of responsibility for the kind of day-to-day administrative running off the school. So looking back at it, I realized that while I was certainly doing management and managing teams, because I managed the staff here mostly as well. At San Jose State, I also find that this was my comfort level. I did not want to be a manager who was actually at the head of things. It was not suitable for my personality. I am fairly introverted. And I think my takeaway from this is that you can be an introverted person and still be very much involved, leading and managing. I didn't want to be the person out there attending conferences. I don't particularly enjoy them. I didn't want to be the person out there glad-handing and having to raise money and do all of those things. But I was a very detail-oriented person who enjoyed implementing things. And that was a strong comfort level for me. So I guess one of the takeaways I think is that it's everybody has a capability to engage in leadership and management. It doesn't necessarily mean that you're heading up the unit. It could be that you're running a team or doing various other things. And I would encourage you to look for different places where you can do that at your comfort level. So that when you go for those interviews, you can point out that you have taken a leadership role in different kinds of ways. And it's still comfortable for your personality. And if you're the person who wants to be there leading at the conferences and doing all those things, recognize that that's good and then go for that, but kind of know yourself. Now, I think for me, I would recommend the following courses. If you think this is a good area for you and something that you would enjoy. I think the one unit course that we offer on change management is very important. Because really there's no constant anymore. Every day there's some new crisis and you have to be good at dealing with change. And change management and not let it bother you and sleep tightly at night and get up in the morning and deal with the next crisis and move on. So I think the change management class is very important. I think project management is an excellent skill to have. The other class, the class on social crises management that we offer taught by Jed Jumba is again, very, very important dealing with all the kinds of social issues that now have to be taken in libraries. I think Dr. Allman's class, and she'll speak to it, I'm sure, on the emerging technologies and the kinds of ways she approaches that and encourages you to be able to keep up with emerging trends is another very important class, I would think. And having a cultural competency class. Finally, I think one of the two classes handling data, data services in libraries are the class that I think Taryn mentioned, where she talked about Dr. Jefferson's class on collecting and analyzing evidence. Again, those things, that skill set will set you very much up for managing whether you want to be the number two person or the number three person or the number one person managing various projects. And again, finally, do try to fit in that internship, whether it's virtual or on site, depending on what time that you have. And then at the internship site, be willing to step up and to make that effort perhaps to attend some of their meetings, see how management is handled there, offer to perhaps work with one of the managers to help with different projects and kind of hone your management skills. And having given all those marvelous words of wisdom, I think, Sue, it goes over to you. Thank you so much. I've got lots of things to piggyback on what you said, a little deviation from what I had planned. But at San Jose and in the program that you're in, there are so many courses and so many opportunities for you to gain experiences through the coursework, as well as opportunities to volunteer in the Library 2.0 conference. Some of the other things that Sheila had listed on the slide several when she was talking about it. But you don't have to have every single skill the minute you graduate. You need to be a lifelong learner. So I'm here to advocate that you become as broad-based as possible by taking a lot of different classes in the areas in leadership and management, as well as if you want to specialize in a particular service area or technical service area, public or technical. You've got lots of opportunities to do that. And the leadership and management pathway can be for all types of libraries and information centers and for all types of positions. You don't just have to be the number one or two person in an organization in order to exhibit your management and leadership skills. So I would recommend that you go back and look at the career pathways to see what is recommended for that. But even before you do that, start to look at all the job advertisements that you can. See which ones that you gravitate towards. Maybe you'll find some new ones that you didn't even know existed. If you haven't taken Info 204, we look at different job types and categories. And Kim Doherty has put in so many resources on the website for career development that you really need to start in those two places. And when you find a job that really appeals to you, see what the requirements are. And then you need to do some self assessment to see what types of transferable skills that you already possess from your undergraduate or other graduate degrees you may have and all different types of work experiences. It doesn't just have to be library and information center oriented because you may have managed people, managed resources in another component of your life. So you need to take charge of that, see what skills are required, which ones are recommended, and know the difference between requirements and recommendations in the positions. Requirements, you really need to have those skills or abilities and recommended are the things that they would like you to have. As a manager and a leader, you need to have the strategic and critical thinking skills, the broad based background that I mentioned, as well as the interpersonal skills. And I wanted to go back a minute to the pathways. These are not things that were just pulled out of thin air. There is a program advisory committee for each pathway. And I co-chair the leadership and management pathway along with Deborah Hicks who teaches on the faculty and five managers and leaders within the profession. And we take our job very seriously looking at the courses that we recommend and which ones that we think are most advantageous for you. And we've also just started a webinar series which Sheila has put up for you, A Day in the Life of a Library Leader. And the one that we did last year focused on how to plan for crises, as well as plans for normal everyday activities in the library. But with the change, with the pandemic, with budget, you need to know how to plan strategically for these operations. Also, there are the foundation courses. And then as Dr. Main mentioned, there are seminars that are one to three units. And these are fabulous opportunities for you to learn about topics where you may not have any experience. You're going to be learning from people in the field who are doing this on a daily basis. And you'll get to know them, as well as the content. I do teach several courses in the leadership and management area, the one that Dr. Main mentioned is the Emerging Future, Technology Issues and Trends. And it is very global in its approach. We learn how to plan strategically and to forecast. We're not looking at a crystal ball. We're not making predictions, but we're looking at the environment in which we're in as an organization, in society locally, and looking at all the different technologies that are available. You can't just take every single new technology that comes along. You have to know your users, what they need, what you have the money for. And you can get some practical experience in this course. The Clever Lab, which is in the Martin Luther King Library, is a virtual library filled with all different kinds of technologies that you can use from a distance. You do not need to do it on campus. And one of the students who started this project in the course in the spring term, has it showcased, in the students' showcase online. So you can get hands-on experience. I'm meeting with the director of that lab next week so that we can plan for new activities, new experiences for students who take it next spring. So that is something that the course is constantly changing with the new technologies, but the forecasting techniques and skills can put you in good stead in any type of situation. I teach marketing, which is also important for promoting your organization, promoting your special area in the organization, and advocacy, so that we're looking at ways to fundraise and to get the word out to lots of different people in the community. In the summer, I teach a course on interpersonal communication. We're in the midst of it right now, and we have a very long unit in a short course on personality type preferences. So whether you have a preference for details, or you're more interested in the big picture, or somewhere in between both, whether you really like to go out there, and as Dr. Main said, do the glad handy, you can become more comfortable and more knowledgeable not only about your own preferences, but the other people who you meet. And your behaviors can change. While it may not be your preference to be in public service on an eight-hour shift, you can certainly do it and then find other ways to reenergize and recharge if you have a preference for doing it in that way. So I would encourage you to look at those courses as well as the others that the program advisory committee has recommended in the pathways. So assess your transferable skills, mapping them to the jobs that look really interesting to you. Review the career development website and become intimate with it because there are so many gems on how to retool your resume, your cover letter, have your social media presence. I know not everybody wants to have one, but many organizations are recruiting people based on what they have on LinkedIn or Facebook, LinkedIn though in particular, so that you can have your professional presence there. And I'm sure Kim Doherty will talk to that as well. And take the courses that will broaden your background as well as, you know, I'm going to say what they've all said so far. Do those internships, whether they're virtual or in person. Get to know people in organizations so that you can find someone who can advise you and make use of us as advisors on where we can recommend places for you to get that experience. And often students are hesitant. They say, oh, I hate to bother you to write a letter of recommendation, but I was in your 204 course or whatever. You know, that's why we're here. So get to know us. And if you are going to ask someone for a letter of reference, make sure that you give them an updated resume and let them know what your strengths are, what past experiences that you have, and don't be concerned about asserting yourself in all of these areas. So I think I've talked on everything in my notes, but I will be able to answer questions when we get to that part of the Q&A. So I will now turn it over to Kim Doherty. Well, I have just realized the benefit of being the last person to speak because there has been so much incredibly useful information. And so I wanted to follow up on some of the key points that have been made. But I'll start by saying, I am your career advisor, your career consultant. And I've worked with many of you up to this point and would look forward to working with all of the rest of you in the future as you have a need for any kind of career counseling. My background is a little bit different than the rest of our speakers in that most of my work as an information professional has been in the private sector. So I have actually worked as the sort of head person in doing content development, online content development for one, two, three, four, five, five startups. And I got, I hate to say roped into it, but I got encouraged to take on these jobs because the projects themselves were so cool. There was no way I was going to say no to those projects. It was basically using my information skills to create content and create resources. But sort of as Linda pointed out, those of us who are on the more introverted side of the spectrum, and I am definitely that person may assume as I did, I don't need to really think about management because in my worst dreams, I would end up managing people. What I discovered was that if you're going to manage a project, you are also going to be managing people. And sort of to Linda's point, if you're smart or if you're sort of looking at how to do this more effectively, what you're going to figure out is that you have a certain management comfort zone. It's not about usually we think of our comfort zones as how much we know and how much we know what to do, how to do things, sort of our domain knowledge. But in terms of management, it can often be our comfort zone in terms of our own personalities. So I couldn't recommend Dr. Almond's course on interpersonal communication skills for librarians strongly enough. The better you know who you are and what kinds of environments best suit your strengths, the easier it will be for you to find those environments or in any job situation to create the environment that enables you to bring your best stuff into play. It enables you to be the best management person you can be given whatever situation you're in. So again, take Sue's course. And I couldn't agree more with what Dr. Maine has said about sort of finding your own sweet spot in how you manage. One of the things that I have found over the years as I have taught a course in alternative LIS careers is that many, many, many of my students would sort of, what would I call this, virtually run screaming from the classroom when I said how many of you want to be managers. Pretty much everybody was interested in doing a certain kind of LIS work, but management seemed scary and off-putting to them. I'm here to tell you that pretty much no matter where you start your career sooner or later, you are going to end up managing someone or managing something, resources, a project, people. It's just what happens as your career and your skills continue to expand to meet the opportunity whatever it is. So I would encourage you to assume that as you grow in your career, management will be part of it, but that's not scary. You will have by the time that happens to you a sense of personal agency where you will understand I have the ability to shape this role in such a way that I can bring my strings to the table and I can also help those people I'm managing identify and deliver their strengths as well. One of the things I would add to what's been said so far is that thinking about what I would call self-leadership is a great way to start practicing these skills. You don't have to be in charge of a 20-person department to start implementing some of the information that you are finding, for example, as you're going through and building your portfolio. Sheila, I thought, did a great job in showing you how you could sort of build a self-inventory and I would add to and absolutely emphasize what Sheila said is brilliant because one of the things when you get into a hiring situation, a job interview, is you're going to want to be able to tell stories about when you have used your skills to accomplish something. If we go back to what Sheila was talking about and where you sort of documented the Lama foundational competencies and then you've done a self-inventory saying, okay, this is where I have met that competency for you to be able to tell that story or here's an example of a situation when I needed to do XYZ and so here's how I handled that. Those stories are what a hiring manager is looking for. The difference between saying I took a course in team building and here's an example of when I used my team building skills to meet a challenge or accomplish a goal is night and day. So I would strongly sort of double down on what Sheila was saying and say, yes, you can start thinking about this now. I would say start thinking about your own career in terms of agency and self-leadership. Where can you exercise these kinds of skills for your own leadership in your own choices, professional choices, to start practicing them and get a sense of what they look like? In addition to what we've talked about so far, and again, I can't say enough about how everything that everybody said is spot on, I would encourage you within the framework of self-leadership to look at four additional skill sets to practice. The first one I would encourage you to look at is decision-making. Because you will find as you go through your program, as you go through your career, as you're making choices about what's the trajectory, what's the direction you might want to take your career, one of the things you're going to need to practice is your ability to make decisions. So I would say start small and get a sense of how you, what's your process for making decisions where at the end of that process, and you are making decisions, you are comfortable with whatever choice you have made. A caveat here, of course, is we all make the best decisions we can with the information that we have at hand and just hope for the best. And if it doesn't work out, then our next option is okay, what did I learn from this? I don't know how many of you know about design thinking, but the premise is there are no bad decisions. There are only decisions that you didn't learn from. So I would say start practicing your process for decision-making now and figure out what makes you most comfortable with the decisions that you do commit to, whether it's in grad school or in your career. For example, for me as an information geek, my approach to decision-making is to essentially research the heck out of it and learn everything I can about the decision I'm making and the potential downsides, and then go through a process of saying, okay, if that happens, how do I handle that? So that's how I make decisions. That's my process. But my guess is that yours could be completely different. And that's something that you want to practice while you're in grad school. That is part of that self-leadership skill set. Another one sort of builds off what Sue was talking, or Dr. Amo was talking about with forecasting and making predictions. Again, we go into decision-making with the best knowledge we have at that moment. And that part of that is forecasting and being able to make predictions. But another piece of that is risk assessment. This is something I would encourage you to practice as you are going through the program or your early professional career, because part of decision-making is the ability to perform risk assessment. And that comes down to how big are the damage issues here if the risk goes south, but how much is there to be gained if it doesn't? Because every job I have taken on in the last 20 to 30 years of my career has been situations where I had basically no knowledge of how I was going to do what I was going to do. And so I had to do a risk assessment as part of my decision-making of how that could this get, what do I want to have in place to manage those risks. And this is the risk that I am willing to take and that it is worth taking. Some risks are huge and and not worth taking. Other risks are minimal. They might make you uncomfortable, but if you can get into the habit of taking risks and stretching beyond that knowledge domain comfort zone or even in Linda's situation beyond your personal comfort zone, you will be able to contribute at a much greater rate and level with the skills that you have. The other thing as part of that I would go back to is Dr. Amund's comment about forecasting and predictions. I have spent most of my career as part of my self-leadership skillset doing environmental scanning where I am constantly looking at information feeds to see what is coming next, to see what was yesterday just a blip on the horizon. And today I'm seeing 12 articles on this topic. And when I look at conference programming, I'm realizing there are now 12 conference programs set up on this topic. You want to be looking forward, you want to be scanning the horizon as much as you can. And then the last thing I would mention in terms of my recommendations would be as you go through the program, try to develop what I would call an adaptive competency. So you're going to see a lot of competencies. SLA has its set of competencies, ALA does. We've talked about a number of them here. LAMA has a set of competencies, which I think are outstanding. But I would encourage you to develop where and when you can your ability to pivot, to adapt to the moment, to adapt to the crisis, to adapt to the opportunity. And that comes through going through these processes and these courses that have been recommended to you. And then sort of understanding this is who I am. This is how I would adapt to these new situations. Because trust me, you are going to have many, many new situations thrown at you, which actually is kind of the really cool thing about this career is that it is just so fun and so rewarding. Oh, and I'll wrap up with one other point here. I have worked with many grad school MLIS high school programs. San Jose State's program is without a doubt the strongest program you could be participating in to develop an adaptive competency and self-leadership and the kinds of skills that you will need to flourish and thrive and contribute to the profession at the highest level that you would like to contribute. So with that, I will sign off with Mike or I will be at the ready. Wow, thank you, Kim. You're so inspirational to listen to and I confess that I do listen to your recordings a lot and I find them very inspiring. So I suggest everyone here on this call also take part in visiting your channel on our YouTube to take part in listening to more of your words of wisdom. At this point, we have our Q&A open for folks to go ahead and enter your questions for this panel. I will go ahead and moderate the questions and I'll start with the first one. So anonymous attendee, thank you for your time and putting this together. I received an MA in art history from the University of Houston. Last May, I currently work as a bilingual community library specialist in the North Bay. I want to establish a library in my hometown in Mexico and I would like to focus my degree in learning and networking in order to accomplish this goal. Can the speakers give me any advice in what track and courses I should take? Is there a way for me to direct my MLIS degree to develop a plan of action or even start the process of action for this goal? Well, I can, this is Linda, I can jump in and start the conversation and then hopefully Sue and Kim can come in. I think the advice that Sue gave earlier will be relevant here. You do not have to declare a pathway of course. You can pick and choose things from different pathways and I think that's what you'd be looking at here. I would think possibly a couple of classes that I would recommend and the others would probably be able to come through with others. Certainly you would want to be up on collection management and you might be able to target your collection management assignments to building and developing a library from scratch. I would think also the class, the 282 class, which is seminar and library management with a focus on financial management might be very useful. Another thing you might consider is doing an Info 298. Now 298 is a special studies class. It's a really independent study and of course, it's towards your MLIS. You can take up to six units of 298. Most people just don't do the full six units but you can take up to six units. Then if you perhaps worked with one of the faculty who teach in all of different management areas, you could start perhaps laying out and devising the steps that you would need to do in order to get this library underway. Of course, that might be really helpful for you would be a blueprint that you would then have as you sort of move towards accomplishing the goal. Then obviously the other class that I would recommend would be a project management class. Again, you might be able to target your assignments that way. I'm sure the others have something to add as well. I'll pop in. It's Sue. I would agree wholeheartedly with what Linda has said. The special studies is what struck me when I first looked at the question to get a plan of action under the direction of a faculty member so that you could plan that out. You'll need to find out about fundraising and advocacy so that you can get this started in your hometown. You'll need all the courses that Dr. Main suggested as well. It also depends if you are going to go back there to do this full-time or if you want to get volunteers to do that. I would say think about how you want it to look, go backwards. You want to set your goal and then do back casting. That's another type of forecasting tool where you start with what you want to have accomplished and then work backwards to plan how you're going to achieve it each step of the way. Think about that and whether you're going to do this on a full-time basis or to get someone else to work with. I do know someone who developed a library in a small community in Peru and got volunteers to do it. That might even be somebody to network with to see how they did it. Kim, do you have anything? Sorry about that. I just unmuted my thought. First of all, I think this is an incredibly cool idea. I wish you the best of success. Second of all, I'm going to go back to what Dr. Oman was saying earlier about essentially let us help you, which is don't hesitate to ask us to help you see about whether or not there's an internship available or writing letters or recommendation. What I would recommend you, the two things I would recommend you focus on is, first of all, research the landscape. Who else is doing something like this or who has done something like this? You're going to be, to Dr. Oman's point, financing and grant funding is going to be a huge piece of this for you. I would advise spending your time while you're in grad school and you have what I would call the student halo going for you, which means that pretty much anyone in the universe will talk to you if you tell them that you're a grad student doing research. I would just get out there online and through networking with people that you may know, whether in Mexico or here in the US and just start talking to people. Find out who is working in this field or doing something similar. Have a conversation with them about how did you do this? What obstacles did you run into? What did you find worked when you were trying to do something like this? The other thing I would look for is who in the sort of international or global landscape is looking at doing these kinds of opportunities and might be very interested in helping you put something like this together, even if it were a pilot program that you could say, work with me and then we'll write this up as a model that other communities could use to do something similar. I would start using every course that I was taking that lent itself in any way, shape or form to furthering your goals here. I would, if possible, if it's okay with your faculty, do all of your coursework and assignments focusing on this issue of how to make this go live. Because to me, when I think about this, you've got two pieces of this. The first one is how do you create this library? And that's very much like very much courses like collection development and project management and those sorts of things. But the other piece of it is how do you create the opportunity and the support and the advocacy for this opportunity to go live, to give birth to this opportunity? And I think that's when you need to be strategic about networking absolutely everywhere you can. I don't know if well enough to know, and that's the International Federation of Libraries Association I think, IFLA. I don't know if they might be a resource for you because I just don't know enough about them. But I think your goal is going to be a sort of charting the landscape, seeing who's available to help you, seeing how they can help you and reaching out to them because I have no doubt that they would want to help you. So those would be my recommendations. Thank you. Great tips. Let's go on to the next question. I'm trying to gain work experience and enter the career of archiving or some managerial role in planning for a department, often without previous work skills or job applications. What is the best way to frame high school courses for these situations? Sheila, Mrs. Sue, we've got so many questions and only 11 minutes left. So I'd like to suggest that maybe just one of us to answer each of these and this one that you just read seems to be in Kim's area. Okay. Okay. You've asked a good question and this is a question that students ask over and over again. And it is, I'm going to be honest with you, really tough to do because especially in archives, people, there are a lot of people competing for those jobs and a lot of them have worked in an archives before, in an archive setting before. So what I would suggest you do is to find opportunities to volunteer or to find an internship or to join SAA, Society of American Archivists, and start networking with the people who are working in the kinds of archives you would like to work in. Because the one thing that might get you over the obstacle of I want to do this job, but you're asking for experience and I don't have any, is if people have gotten to know you as a professional through you volunteering through an association. And so they don't think of you as Jodo, the student at home say they think of you as Jodo who is starting his career as in archives. And then you have the opportunity to talk to people about the cool stuff that you learned how to do in your San Jose courses. You will find that your personal connections are the strongest things you will have going for you when you are applying for jobs. So my recommendation would be go through your programs, go through your courses, look at skill sets that you can put into play even if it's by volunteering at some organization that you're aware of that needs to have their records, their materials, put it into an archival collection, find or create opportunities to get the skills out there so you can tell people that you have in fact done this. Okay, thank you. Let's go to the next one. This person is attending the Society of American Archivist Conference as a grad student in August from a small scholarship and wants to know what is the best way to use this conference attendance experience for applying to jobs. Would anyone like to answer this? I'll say you might check and see if they have volunteer opportunities where you can be some type of moderator, work at the registration, possibly if there's a student poster session that you could participate in. Are there others on the panel who'd like to suggest? I think those are great ideas, Sheila. I'm writing away responding to some of these answers. So if people look in the answered section of the Q&A, you'll be able to see those as well. But I definitely think look for the placement service at ALA and then go to different sessions and start up conversations. If they have a shuttle bus, then sit yourself down beside someone and start up a conversation and have your elevator speech ready at all these conferences. Anytime, you never know who you're going to run into. So you are ready to say, I am ex. I'm in the MLIS program at San Jose State. This is my area of interest. These are my experiences. I will never forget one of the most brilliant students that I had had in years got tongue tied at a conference because they didn't have an elevator speech prepared when they were sitting beside someone who had a job opportunity. So that's the number one thing is go with a one minute speech about yourself, what your strengths are, and what you're looking for. And I realize we're only doing one, but I'm going to jump in really quickly here and say, do not go to a conference without having business cards. Even all, if all it has is your name and contact information just so you can write on it, and so anyone you meet can write on it. Great tip. There is a lengthy question from Erin, which we may need to handle privately on email. I'll go to the next one. Sybil asks, I'm working part-time as an elementary school librarian. I would like to be an outreach librarian in a public or academic library. Do you think I still need to do an internship since I'm getting hands-on experience already? How about Dr. Maine? Sure, I'm happy to give a quick answer to that one. I think the answer is yes, the experience has to be relevant. And in fact, the more of it you have is good. I think the experience you have working in the elementary school library will be very good, especially if you end up working in a public library, for example, with children or young adults. But I think an internship would also still be very helpful. Okay, it looks like we have... Can I just say one more thing about that? You never know where you're going to end up. So while you may think that you want to be in one particular type of library, in one particular location, things change. And the jobs that you're going to have 10 or 15 years from now may not even exist. When I first started, we did not have online education, but I've been involved with it as it evolved from a very rudimentary interactive television to what we have now. So always think ahead that you may not always be in that position and that you are going to be the lifelong learner. Great. Sheila, I was just going to say, I think, and to Aaron, Aaron, I think your question, perhaps, is one that privately you might want to reach out to Kim, because it's basically about developing your resume and developing your career in order to get started, I think, within a library. This might be something that you might privately want to talk with with Kim. Happy to do so, Aaron. So, Kim, what is the best way for our attendees or our folks listening to this recording? What is the best way for students to reach out to you? There is, this is very, that's a good question because people come to me through, oh, wait, I think I know the answer to this. I think if you go to the career development section on the website, that my contact information shows up on every page. So, I would say just go to the career development section, and it should say how to contact me. And then when you click on that and send me an email, I get right back to you and say, let's talk. Fantastic. Okay, folks, so we have about two minutes left. If there are last minute burning questions for our panelists, please go ahead and enter them into the Q&A, and we'll see if anyone else has last minute questions for our panel. Oh, career podcasts are on the school's YouTube channel. Kim, would you like to talk a little bit more about the podcast recordings? Sure, the podcast recordings are done with individuals who are practitioners and are sort of talking about how their careers have worked, what they do, what they love about it, advice for students, all sorts of good information like that. So, I would encourage you to when you have a moment, look through the podcast that we have there and see especially if there are individuals, because there will be a brief description within each one, look especially if there are individuals who are doing work that you think you might be interested in, because the podcasts are sort of meant to be, okay, let's vet our assumptions here. We think this kind of work is something that we might be really interested in, but let's learn more about it. Let's find out what it's really like to do this work. And so I am trying to go broadly throughout the profession to pick up as many different kinds of career paths and practitioners as I possibly can in our podcast. Also, so I would encourage you to listen to it, but also pretty much everybody that I've interviewed, I have sort of said, in just in case anybody has questions, can they reach out to you and learn more through an informational interview? And everybody's very enthusiastic about doing that. So it's sort of another pathway to learn more about that sort of pressing question, which is, is this a way I would like to use my LIS skills? Fantastic. So on behalf of Taran and myself, Student Services Team and Gina Lee, we'd love to thank you for this session today, all of our panelists, and for all of our attendees, thank you for taking your lunch break with us. We will be adding this session to our channel, our playlist on the YouTube presence, the school's YouTube presence. So I hope I encourage everyone who has followed questions to contact us at ischoolsjsu.edu or sign up to have a Student Services appointment with one of us. So take great care, everyone, and thank you so much for attending today.