I have to say that I still can’t wrap my mind around the fact that Info Career Trends is going on indefinite hiatus. I think it is one of the best places to go for articles about all sorts of facets of library careers, work and advice. Thank goodness that the back issues will remain on the web, along with feeds from other parts of the blog. So in honor of ICT, I had to talk a little about two of the articles that come from the last issue and touch home for those of us who are new and/or work in academia.

Moving Ahead without Moving Up by Brenna Helmstutler is a great article for those who work as academic librarians. She offers some great suggestions on being involved and evolving in your role as an academic librarian. I especially liked the reminders of what types of characteristics one should cultivate as you move forward.

To the point of what you can do to move forward, here is Veronica Arellano’s article Ask Forgiveness Later. I completely adore this article because it is pretty much how I feel about work and implementing new technologies and tools in the workplace. As it is often said, “It is better to ask forgiveness than permission.” Not to be totally subversive, but it works pretty well. Not that committees, as Arellano points out, don’t have a place in the academic scheme of things, but often change needs to take place on an individual level before it ever moves onto a committee or institutional level. You can’t wait for someone else to give you a project to do, you have to go out and try things. And some fail spectacularly and some succeed brilliantly–luckily there is always something else to try.

I just finished listening to a Webinar led by Darlene Fichter & Jeff Wisniewski titled “How Social is Your Web Site?” today. It reminds me of the points above in that one needs to get out into the social media, but also have a plan. One can be slightly subversive, but still have a plan and that probably is one of the best recipes for succeeding in the ever-changing social media landscape. The best part of the webinar was definitely the ways of measuring success in implementing social media through quantitative measures and qualitative measures. We need to prove the worth of our services in order to move more fully into the Web 2.0 world. More on that later.

Have a great day. Remember to read a lot, think a little about how you can move forward and the Waki Librarian will be back with another missive soon.