by infonistaadmin | Jul 11, 2010 | LIS Career Strategy
The problem is this: Often the heart and mind disagree. Fervently.
– Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard
You know the feeling: you know you need to make a change of some sort, but don’t seem to be able to get it in gear.
Perhaps you’ve decided to broaden your skill set, which may mean pursuing an online certificate or degree, something you’ve never done before. Or you’ve decided that you’re going to start actively building your professional brand online, necessitating learning and using unfamiliar tools. Or you’ve determined that your organization could support professional development among the staff much more effectively if it changed its approach to annual performance evaluations – but how do you help bring about that change in approach?
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by infonistaadmin | Jul 5, 2010 | Career Profiles, LIS Career Options
Heather Hedden, author of the excellent and very practical The Accidental Taxonomist(Information Today, 2010), has developed her career as a respected taxonomist by being willing to take on new challenges, move fluidly between employment and self-employment, and constantly learn more about the issues and technologies that drive this discipline. In Heather’s words:
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by infonistaadmin | Jul 3, 2010 | LIS Career Strategy
One of the really cool things about how flexible an LIS career can be is that it allows you to create your own path, and pretty much endlessly take that career onto new paths as your life circumstances dictate. And if you enjoy multi-tasking, one of those new paths might actually be to take it several directions at the same time.
For example, as you think about the future of your career, you might consider combining multiple types of income streams. For example:
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by infonistaadmin | Jun 26, 2010 | LIS Career Options
That’s one of the questions we’ll be exploring in a new subgroup I’ve just created on LinkedIn – and we need your participation!
The goal of the group is to provide a forum for asking your career questions, sharing your career and professional expertise, finding out more about career paths that may be of interest to you, and finding ways to connect with people who may be able to help with your career goals.
How To Join the Group
If you’re already a LinkedIn member, just go to the LIS Career Options group page (it’s a subgroup of the ALA groups page; you don’t have to be an ALA member to join, but you will have to join the ALA LinkedIn Group) and sign up – no approval process necessary. Then jump in and start asking or answering questions, start a new discussion thread, recommend a great resource, or contribute in any way you’d like. (And yep, lurkers are welcome, too!)
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by infonistaadmin | Jun 11, 2010 | Information Brokering
Pop quiz: what’s the one resource every aspiring information broker and independent researcher should read, re-read, and keep handy on his or her desk? The recently released second edition of Mary Ellen Bates’ Building & Running a Successful Research Business (CyberAge Books/Information Today, Inc.).
Subtitled “A Guide for the Independent Information Professional,” the second edition of this popular and practical guide is even more useful than the first edition (2003), because so much has changed in the ensuing seven years. Bates captures this perfectly in her introduction:
When I wrote the first edition of this book, blogs were a novelty; Google’s ad server was cranking out ads so fast that it ran out of “inventory” (not enough advertisers for the space available); and “knowledge management” was the hot new job title. What I find most exciting about what has happened since the early 2000s is that what was then only available to the big players is probably now just an app you can download to your phone.
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