“Bottom line: LIS jobs will most definitely be available, they just may look a bit different than you were expecting” (Kim Dority).

Confession: I have never worked in a library, and I may never do so.  Yet, I call myself a librarian, because I focus on competitive intelligence and information management.  Those are skills I developed through an LIS education and are a way to brand myself to employers and clients who have no idea they need a librarian. They simply know they are drowning in data and information and would love for someone to come along to curate that into actionable intelligence to best support their business decisions.

I learned how to write like this because of Kim Dority.  Second confession: I am lucky enough to call her one of my mentors, so I’ve had the opportunity to ask “Really?  ME?  I can market myself like this?  I can create a career out of my favorite types of information work?”  And the answer is always absolutely yes.  If you’ve read “Rethinking Information Work,” Kim’s first book, you know that it focuses on defining your perspective and self-understanding of the information work you want to do.  “LIS Career Sourcebook” builds on that process, articulating how to make a career out of it, starting from graduate school (or not!) to leadership and management.  Essentially, it helps you define a context for the work you want to and can do with your information skills.

In addition, Kim outlines steps to take yourself down the path of that work, in an non-intimidating way.  The book combines questions like “What types of organizations (library, company, nonprofit, association, government agency, etc.) might you want to work for?” with practical tips like “check…Vault Reports or Wetfeet for starters…” In that sense, it’s an excellent balance of theoretical outline and practical tips for LIS career planning and job hunting.  The text also covers the importance of networking, discovering and utilizing the hidden job market and conducting regular information monitoring to keep tabs on the industry and profession.

Overall, I am recommending this book to anyone in the LIS world.  It is smartly organized with extensive details and resources for developing a successful career working with information.

<<updated 4/22/2013>>

The Rocky Mountain Chapter hosted its April Third Thursday Virtual Lunch featuring Anne Hengehold! View the recorded program here.

Date: Thursday, April 18, 2013

Time: 12:00 PM, Mountain Standard Time

Are you wondering if you can trade the insecurity of your corporate gig for more control over your destiny? Or hoping to use an unemployed moment to discover work you love?

Hear the story of how one corporate library refugee is turning downsized into a right-sized job and life.

You’ll come away with a starter kit of questions, checklists and resources including:

• What to know about yourself before you start
• 5 essential team members
• 3 planning sketches you can’t do without
• Time, dirt and money
• Measuring gains along the way

About Anne:

While officially an “independent information professional” since 2011, Anne Hengehold has been on a trajectory leading to the founding of Clarify Information Services since the mid 80’s. By day, she was growing the production side of a fledgling audio services company. By night, prepping for radio interviews with authors and other intriguing thinkers allowed her inner info junky to run wild. Add one Masters in Library Science and Information degree, seven years in a fabulous library at an engineering firm, blend with one corporate implosion, and you have a recipe for the making of an independent info pro.

An SLA member since 2005, Anne currently serves as President of SLA Illinois.

View the slide deck here: From Corp to Inc

Written by Esti Shay

Kim Dority headlined this year’s Spotlight on Your Career event, presenting strategies for transitioning to new job opportunities, inside or outside of the library industry.  Ms. Dority is the founder of Dority & Associates, Inc., an information strategies company, and lectures at DU on alternative LIS career paths.  Focusing on marketing LIS skills to those outside of the industry, Ms. Dority explained how professional equity – the combination of who you know, what you know, and what those around you know about you – can be sculpted and utilized to direct your career path and discover job opportunities.  Attendees were provided with opportunities to network and discuss the class content before, during, and after the program.

Dority outlined six different avenues a librarian may take in searching for new job opportunities, focusing the discussion on two of them: doing LIS work for a new company in an industry unfamiliar with the LIS skills set, and finding a non-LIS job doing related work using transferable skills with either the same employer or a different employer in the same industry.  To illustrate the breadth of these opportunities, Dority shared a list of 127 “Alternative LIS Job Titles,”[i] which she maintains on her website, infonista.com (http://bit.ly/12LzPAa).  She encouraged attendees to send her suggestions of other job titles, as the list is continually evolving.

LinkedIn was a major topic of conversation and a valuable tool that Dority returned to again and again, with suggestions on how to use the site to enhance your network, improve your job-hunt, and marketing yourself widely.  She called it “the introvert’s best friend for personal branding.”  Yet, the presentation was pleasantly light on buzz words and full of useful suggestions for redirecting one’s career.

This program was sponsored by Thomson Reuters, Morgridge College of Education, and the AALL/Bloomberg Continuing Education Grants Program.  In accordance with the grant’s requirements, the program was recorded and will be made available to AALL members.  A copy of Kim Dority’s latest book, LIS Career Sourcebook: Managing and Maximizing Every Step of Your Career, was donated by ABC-CLIO and raffled off for attendees.

If this topic piques your interest and you watch the recorded presentation, be sure to give the challenging Job Mapping Template exercise a try.  The exercise, plus Dority’s recommendations for tone and focus, may help jumpstart efforts to draft the often-dreaded elevator speech.