Goals for 2010

2009 was a great year — I took a daydream of becoming a librarian and took active steps to make it a reality. Library school, library conferences, library volunteerism.

My goals for 2010 are pretty straightforward — keep doing what I’ve been doing (going to library school, attend local and national library conferences, and continue to gain library experience by working in the local libraries in my area).

In addition, I plan to be more active in my local library associations and ALA by joining at least one committee in each organization and continuing to network with other members. I’m also debating joining one of the following: SLA, ASIS&T, or ACRL. I’m interested in academic libraries, but also special libraries as well. Decisions, decisions, decisions.

I still want to have my MLIS 100% funded, so I’m continuing to seek out scholarships, fellowships, and other sources of funding. Ideally, I’d like to be able to not use student loans at all. I’m applying for several scholarships this year and am applying to a few library schools with generous scholarship packages to see what I can get.

Here’s to a even better 2010!

What a year!

What a difference twelve months makes. At this time last year, I was still employed as a software engineer at my previous company. I enjoyed it, but it wasn’t a good fit for me. Less than two months later, I would be unemployed with plenty of time to figure out my next steps.

To date:

- I’ve started graduate school at Wayne State University.
- I attended two library conferences: the Connecticut Library Association conference and the New England Library Association conference. I also live-blogged portions of the NELA conference.
- I applied for at least ten pre-professional library positions, interviewed at three of them and ultimately accepted a position with the third one. Whoohoo!
- I have been volunteering at a rural public library for the last six months.
- I’ve entered the E. J. Josey Award competition by modifying an old class assignment.
- I requested to serve on one of the ALA committees (I also requested to serve on a NMRT committee as well, but decided to hold off for the time being).

2009 has truly been a challenging year. I struggled with the decision to pursue my librarian dreams, especially in light of being unemployed during a recession and really feeling that I should do the “right” thing and take another software engineering job to support my family. I’m glad that I decided to follow my dreams just this once. I’ve met some wonderful librarians who are working on things that I’m interested in and I’m getting more and more excited about the prospect of working in a library full-time some day.

I’m looking forward to seeing what 2010 has in store for me.