Spectrum Institute Day 2

Second day of the Institute? Also awesome (you’ll note a trend). In the morning we had a session on the origins of the Spectrum Scholarship. We learned about how it started and all the hard work that was put in by people like Elizabeth Martinez, Sandra Rios Balderrama and Betty Turock. Dr. Mengxiong Liu from San Jose State also spoke to us about the early years. The next session was about maneuvering ALA. Chisa, Hector and Patty told us about the many many many many many committees, councils, roundtables, interest groups and affiliates of ALA. After lunch we had a talk about job skills and one of the areas that was mentioned repeatedly was the need for grant writing. SJSU offers a class on grant writing taught by the wonderful Patty Wong. I am hoping it will be offered in the Spring because I really want to take it, but won’t be able to this fall.

After that, we had resume reviews. Mine was with Amy Wallace, the Head of Public Services and Outreach for the library at California State University, Channel Islands. My resume is of course geared toward software jobs, since that’s what I do (and I’ve had the same job for 7 years). However, if I did want to work for a library, it would definitely be an academic one, so it was good to hear about the differences between resumes for various types of libraries, as well as more about how to structure and design your resume when you’re interest in an academic library position. Soon after we had dinner, followed by the professional options fair.

The professional options fair was both to talk to potential employers but to also find out more about affiliate organizations and schools with doctoral programs. The fair reminded me that it’s a small world! I stopped by the table for the Medical Library Association and it turns out the president of MLA knows my aunt (a medical librarian), because they’re in the same region. Then at the ACRL table was Erika Linke, Associate Dean of Libraries for the CMU Library, where I went as an undergrad. I met her last year at the OCLC President’s Luncheon. This time we talked about open source software and the possibility of libraries eventually hiring their own software engineers to contribute to those projects, which would be a pretty cool thing. I also chatted for a bit with Susan and Liana who were there to represent the American Indian Library Association and then stopped to chat with the LITA reps as well. There were several other tables that I stopped at, and overall it was great to renew some contacts from last year’s conference and to make some new ones, as well as find out the wealth of opportunities that are available.