Join the Club!

There are two professional library associations that I recently joined as a part of my current interests and goals, the American Library Association and the DC Library Association.  Joining such organizations was heavily encouraged when I went to new student orientation, and even the little I've been involved with so far I've begun to see their utility.  This is particularly true in that I'm doing my studies online and not able to connect with my professors and classmates in person.  Making connections with other librarians in person is encouraging and the networking I do will hopefully help me get my foot in the door as I start looking for jobs.

Let's turn first to the national organization, the American Library Association (ALA).  The ALA was founded in the nineteenth century in order to help educate, train, support and advocate for librarians in their work.  They now use their resources to provide a wide variety of services to member librarians and to represent the profession to the large world.  Some of the things they do are to provide a twice yearly conference, job listings, ongoing education opportunities, certification of library masters programs, and grants and awards to leaders in the field.

Both individuals and institutions can join the ALA in a variety of membership categories; they just need to be interested in supporting librarians and libraries.  Thankfully they have very reasonable student membership rates, which results in discounts at conferences and the like.  Being members allows you to connect with other librarians and with the resources of the ALA for education and networking.   I in large part joined the ALA so that I can go to their summer conference in Chicago this year for the student membership rate.

The second professional organization that I joined is the District of Columbia Library Association, which is the “state” chapter of the ALA here (though, as I have to often remind people, DC is not a state and we have no voting representation in Congress as a result though we do pay taxes).  As a state chapter, DCLA supports the mission and vision of the ALA but with a particular local focus.  DCLA also, because of its location in the US seat of government, focuses on advocacy and lobbying for issues important to librarians and libraries.  They have a blog that they use to focus government issues in libraries.

While the ALA has a great national reach and has a very developed online community, the DCLA allows me to interact with others face to face.  And their student rate is even better than the ALA’s as it’s free!  The DCLA does a lot of outreach and announcing local one day and evening events as well.  So far I have attended two events that I heard about through their list serve.  One was an evening social hour and lecture but on by the DC Special Library Association and the Military Division of the SLA.  The new head of Arlington Cemetery spoke about her experience of taking over an organization in crisis and was woefully behind in information technology.

The second DCLA publicized event that I've attended was a one day symposium at Catholic University on “Bridging the Spectrum: Scholarshipand Practice in Library and Information Science.”  There was a keynote speaker, presentations and posters over the course of the day.  It was particularly wonderful to hear about the work people were doing in the area and the variety of organizations they were for with MLIS .

Both of these organizations seem to be important to continue to be involved in.  They provide a wider connection outside of my professors and classmates to the library world.  They are both very active and seem very welcoming to students and newbies.  They were easy to find online and have active websites with much useful information on them.  I’m glad to be a member and having the opportunity to learn and meet others interested in library and information science.