NEA Career Development Strategies: Professional Development
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NEA Career Development Strategies: Professional Development
- 1. Professional Development Career Development Strategies for Early Career Professionals Annalisa C. Moretti - Silvia Mejia
- 2. Professional Development • Increase skill levels • Build a portfolio • Make contacts with other archivists • Learn about institutions, collections, and types of jobs • Engage with the archives community Career Development Strategies for Early Career Professionals Annalisa C. Moretti - Silvia Mejia
- 3. Professional Development • Field Experience • Internships • Volunteering • Residencies & Fellowships • Education • Publishing • Scholarships & Funding Career Development Strategies for Early Career Professionals Annalisa C. Moretti - Silvia Mejia
- 4. Internships • Graduate internships • (Usually) unpaid • For academic credit • Supervised by a faculty member • Independent internships • May be paid or unpaid • May or may not be eligible for academic credit • Usually no faculty supervision • Graduate or post-graduate Career Development Strategies for Early Career Professionals Annalisa C. Moretti - Silvia Mejia
- 5. Internships “Although internships are first and foremost intended to educate archives graduate students, internships are partnerships among students, archives programs, and the sites hosting interns …. It is vital that faculty, students, and onsite staff who supervise interns take the time to discuss the project and to establish clear expectations about what will take place during an internship.” Society of American Archivists Best Practices for Internships as a Component of Graduate Archival Education Career Development Strategies for Early Career Professionals Annalisa C. Moretti - Silvia Mejia
- 6. Internships • Internship work should be professional-level work • Supplements your education • Helps you refine your skills • Engages you with the collections and staff • Develops your theoretical and practical archival knowledge • Teaches you about how archives work in a broad sense Career Development Strategies for Early Career Professionals Annalisa C. Moretti - Silvia Mejia
- 7. Internships • There should be a final product • Finding aid • Exhibit • Website • Blog • Digitized collection • Guidelines or documentation Career Development Strategies for Early Career Professionals Annalisa C. Moretti - Silvia Mejia
- 8. Internships • Make an agreement with your supervisor about what your internship will entail • If you weren’t provided with a written description of your internship, design this so that it serves as one. • What are the objectives? How will the internship contribute to your education and career? • What is the expected final product of your internship? • Will you receive public credit for your work? • How much guidance will you receive? • Will you get the opportunity to learn about how the institution runs? Career Development Strategies for Early Career Professionals Annalisa C. Moretti - Silvia Mejia
- 9. Internships • Fantastic Paid Internships and Where to Find Them • Sometimes attached to a specific project • Often the result of advocacy on the part of the archivist in charge • How to get one? • Be geographically flexible • Have an unusual skill to offer • Be prepared and treat it like a job interview Career Development Strategies for Early Career Professionals Annalisa C. Moretti - Silvia Mejia
- 10. Internships “Graduate internships without any form of compensation should be rare to avoid devaluing the professional nature of archival work.” “SAA recognizes that some professionals may investigate additional post- graduate internships … and recommends participants receive fair compensation.” SAA Best Practices for Internships as a Component of Graduate Archival Education Career Development Strategies for Early Career Professionals Annalisa C. Moretti - Silvia Mejia
- 11. Internships • Non-profit vs. for-profit private sector institutions and legality • Fair Labor Standards Act – Fact Sheet 71 • “The Test for Unpaid Interns” at for-profit private sector • Equivalent to educational training • For the benefit of the intern • Employer does not receive immediate advantage from intern’s work • Does not displace regular employees • No expectation of a job at the end • Both parties understand there will be no compensation Career Development Strategies for Early Career Professionals Annalisa C. Moretti - Silvia Mejia
- 12. Volunteering “In lean economic times, some institutions might be tempted to turn to skilled but unpaid volunteers to get work accomplished… Volunteers must enhance, not depreciate, the value of professional archival work … Volunteers are distinct from interns. An internship is an education experience designed to benefit the intern and is under mentorship from a professional.” SAA Best Practices for Volunteers in Archives Career Development Strategies for Early Career Professionals Annalisa C. Moretti - Silvia Mejia
- 13. Volunteering • Goals in volunteering • Meeting people in institutions in your area • Learning about different types of institutions • Demonstrating involvement in the profession on your resume • A chance to get involved in a good cause • Potential to gain leadership roles Career Development Strategies for Early Career Professionals Annalisa C. Moretti - Silvia Mejia
- 14. Volunteering • Days of Service • Spend a day or a few hours at an institution • Meet other archivists • Learn about another archives’ collections • Discover the different ways that institutions process their collections • Get a chance to do archival work you haven’t in the past (digitizing, working with photographs, accessioning, etc.) Career Development Strategies for Early Career Professionals Annalisa C. Moretti - Silvia Mejia
- 15. Volunteering • Days of Service • New England Archivists Annual Meeting • Portsmouth Public Library (Spring 2014) • Boston Public Library (Spring 2015) • Roundtable for Early Professionals & Students Annual Day of Service (this year: October 17, 2015) • The History Project (Boston) • USS Constitution Museum (Boston) • Worcester Refugee Archive (Clark University) • Colchester Historical Society (Connecticut) • Hardwick Historical Society (Vermont) Career Development Strategies for Early Career Professionals Annalisa C. Moretti - Silvia Mejia
- 16. Volunteering • Independent Archives & Volunteer-Run Organizations • Our Marathon: http://marathon.neu.edu/ • The History Project: http://www.historyproject.org/ • Papercut Zine Library: http://www.papercutzinelibrary.org/ • Prison Book Program http://prisonbookprogram.org/ Career Development Strategies for Early Career Professionals Annalisa C. Moretti - Silvia Mejia
- 17. Volunteering • Create your own organization or archives • ProjectARCC (Archivists Responding to Climate Change) http://projectarcc.org/ • Occupy Boston Archives http://archive.occupyboston.org Career Development Strategies for Early Career Professionals Annalisa C. Moretti - Silvia Mejia See Meghan Bailey’s (Simmons ‘13!) article about her work with the Occupy Boston archives in Archival Outlook:
- 18. Volunteering • Professional Organizations • NEA (how to volunteer) • REPS (Roundtable for Early Professionals & Students) • Elections are in Spring 2016! • Committees • SAA • ScoSAA, SNAP (Students and New Professionals) roundtable • Committees, task forces, working groups, etc. Career Development Strategies for Early Career Professionals Annalisa C. Moretti - Silvia Mejia
- 19. Volunteering • Time management & Overcommitment • Find a happy medium that works for you • Be aware of how much time the activities you commit to will take you • Don’t overcommit! • Take care of yourself Career Development Strategies for Early Career Professionals Annalisa C. Moretti - Silvia Mejia
- 20. Residencies & Fellowships • Usually paid with a stipend, housing, etc. • Have an end date • Are competitive and have complex application processes • MIT Libraries Fellows Program • Current Digital Archives Fellow Jessica Venlet’s blog • National Digital Residency Program • Association of College & Research Libraries Residency Interest Group • ARL/SAA Mosaic Program Fellows Career Development Strategies for Early Career Professionals Annalisa C. Moretti - Silvia Mejia
- 21. Education • Workshops • New England Archivists • AV101 – October 22 • Society of American Archivists/Digital Archives Specialization • Arrangement and Description of Electronic Records – March 31, 2016 – Portland, ME • Northeast Document Conservation Center • Metadata for Digital Preservation (webinar) – November 10 • Caring for Municipal Records (webinar) – January 19 • Association for Library Collections & Technical Services Career Development Strategies for Early Career Professionals Annalisa C. Moretti - Silvia Mejia
- 22. Education • MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) • Online only • Usually free (starting to become monetized!) • Course sizes are in the thousands • Taught by professors from regular universities • Some have a rigorous schedule, some are self-paced • Teaching methods include video lectures, readings, assignments, message board discussions • Some of this can be accomplished on your phone via apps! • Not a lot of library/archives-specific courses, but related topics Career Development Strategies for Early Career Professionals Annalisa C. Moretti - Silvia Mejia
- 23. Education • edX http://www.edx.org • Library Advocacy (archived) • HarvardX’s “The Book” series – self-paced courses starting September 21 • Introduction to Computer Science -- self-paced • Introduction to Project Management – starts February 17 Career Development Strategies for Early Career Professionals Annalisa C. Moretti - Silvia Mejia
- 24. Education • Coursera www.coursera.org • Website Development (starts September 14) • Database Management Essentials (starts September 15) • Programming for Everyone (Python) (starts October 4) Career Development Strategies for Early Career Professionals Annalisa C. Moretti - Silvia Mejia
- 25. Education • Other opportunities • RailsBridgeBoston http://www.railsbridgeboston.org/ • CodeAcademy https://www.codecademy.com/ • DuoLingo https://www.duolingo.com/ Career Development Strategies for Early Career Professionals Annalisa C. Moretti - Silvia Mejia
- 26. Publishing • What to publish? • Expand on a paper you wrote for school • Collaborate with another early professional, co-worker, boss, supervisor • Report on an event you attended • Describe a project you took part in • Promote an archives-related topic or cause you are passionate about • Write about your experience as a new professional Career Development Strategies for Early Career Professionals Annalisa C. Moretti - Silvia Mejia
- 27. Publishing • Where to publish? Newsletters! • NEA Newsletter • Meeting Session Reports • “Who’s Missing From This Table?” Career Development Strategies for Early Career Professionals Annalisa C. Moretti - Silvia Mejia
- 28. Publishing • Where to publish? Blogs! • REPS Blog (submission guidelines) • SNAP Blog (submission guidelines) • Hack Library School (guest post information) • I Need A Library Job (submission guidelines) Career Development Strategies for Early Career Professionals Annalisa C. Moretti - Silvia Mejia
- 29. Publishing • Where to publish? And more! • Places to Publish spreadsheet • Archival Practice • Journal of Archival Organization • Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies • Archival Practice • The American Archivist Career Development Strategies for Early Career Professionals Annalisa C. Moretti - Silvia Mejia
- 30. Publishing • Keep in mind… • Get permission before writing about an institution or their collections • Be aware of copyright issues • Read what others have published to get a sense of style • If you’re submitting to a publication or blog, be sure you are aware of their submission rules • Consider workshopping it with other archivists Career Development Strategies for Early Career Professionals Annalisa C. Moretti - Silvia Mejia
- 31. Scholarships & Funding • ArchivesNext Spontaneous Scholarship – for attending SAA! http://www.archivesnext.com • SAA Awards • NEA • A/V Professional Development Award • Richard W. Hale, Jr. Professional Development Award • Meeting & Travel Assistantship Scholarship • Susan J. Von Salis Student Meeting & Travel Scholarship Career Development Strategies for Early Career Professionals Annalisa C. Moretti - Silvia Mejia
Editor's Notes
- There are a lot of links to resources in these slides and so, if you want to follow along right now, or check it out later, I encourage to go take a look at this presentation up on slideshare – it’s up there right now.
- The question I want you to consider as we start to talk about Professional Development is: what can it do for me? I think it’s important to talk about this because we just take it as a given – “Well, of course I need to engage in professional development to further my career.” When you ask “why?” though, then you start to better understand “how”. So here are some reasons WHY you should engage in professional development: To increase your skill level in areas you deem important to your career – and we’ll be doing an activity at the end of this to help you figure out what those might be. To build a portfolio of projects, activities, and professional roles that you can use to demonstrate your skills. To meet and engage with other archivists. To learn about other types of institutions, collections, and job specialties. And most importantly to me – to be a part of the archives community, even at times when the job search process makes you feel isolated, alone, and like you’re not “a real archivist”. If you’ve ever felt like that – I certainly have, and I know lots of people who have, too, especially if they are working in a non-archives position while looking for a job – please consider taking some of the suggestions I’m going to give you. They really can help you, as well as, I think, give you the weapons you need to do battle with the archives job market.
- Next up is the HOW. We’re going to talk about four different ways you can engage in professional development and better your chances in advancing your career. First – what I’m calling “field experiences” – internships, volunteering, and residencies and fellowships. You have probably had some experience with some of these already, but I’m going to suggest a few different manners of getting field experience, too. Secondly is educational opportunities – workshops, like the one you’re taking now, but also some other ways to educate yourself. Then there is publishing – an area I think a lot of people are hesitant to engage in – but which isn’t as scary as you might think. And finally, in order to help you in your journey, I’m going to talk briefly about funding opportunities that you should really look into.
- First, I want break down the types of internships that you usually encounter in the archives field. You all are probably pretty familiar with the first kind, graduate internships, and have had at least one, maybe two so far. But less of you might have had experience with independent internships, which are usually arranged by you with the institution and internship supervisor. There’s lot more responsibility on you as the intern to get what you need out of this internship – there’s also a lot of responsibility on the host institution, but as there is little to no regulation on most of these internships – for reasons I’ll talk about shortly – it’s up to you to make sure your internships are really beneficial to you and that you aren’t being taken advantage of.
- There is no official regulation or rules about archival internships, just guidelines and suggestions by SAA and rules for specific internship programs at graduate institutions. SAA emphasizes in their guidelines that internships are educational, are meant to be partnerships, and that clearness and transparency is extremely important in designing a successful internship. Here’s what SAA says an internship should ideally be in their guidelines: “Although internships are first and foremost intended to educate archives graduate students, internships are partnerships among students, archives programs, and the sites hosting interns …. It is vital that faculty, students, and onsite staff who supervise interns take the time to discuss the project and to establish clear expectations about what will take place during an internship.”
- So what are those expectations? Here I’m going to break down some of the specifics of SAA’s guidelines, which you can read on their website in more detail. Their first point is that the caliber of work you should be doing as an intern ought to be professional level. The purpose of the internship is to help you learn how to put the theoretical concepts you have learned in school into practice, to have some form of evidence of your experience, to network and meet archival professionals, and to figure out what you want to do in your professional career. The primary purpose of internships, especially graduate level internships, is not to help out the institution process their collections. Now, let’s be real here: that is actually what is often happening at these internships. But the emphasis should be placed on your education and not their backlog. In a successful internship these two motivations will often run alongside each other, and the benefit you give to the institution will come naturally while they educate you. Make sure that the duties you are being assigned are ones that are appropriate to your education and skill-level – in other words, more than simply weeding, removing fasteners, relabelling folders, answering phones. You need to get experience in the selective process and research behind all of that. If your internship is not providing you with that kind of work, you need to talk to your supervisor, or to the faculty member who is supervising your internship if it’s for school, and either negotiate your internship requirements or perhaps find an internship that is better suited to you.
- Having some kind of physical representation of what you learned and the duties you performed in your internship is one of your most important goals. Most internships will result in you writing a finding aid, though not all. I would try if possible to get at least one accomplished somewhere. Confession time: I didn’t produce any finding aids at either of my graduate internships. None. Part of the reason I was excited to take the job I have now, besides the fact that it was a full time permanent archives job, is that it’s all processing. So I’ve been able to produce several finding aids since I started there (and I’ve also learned that I definitely want to do more than processing in my future career). So do try to process one collection, from start to finish, even if you are most interested in other career areas. And in other internships, always think about what your end product is going to be. If you aren’t processing a collection, what are you creating? Are you helping to make an exhibit? Take pictures of the process and the end product to document your work in it. If you are creating something digital – a website, blog, digitization project – save copies of everything that appears online. In my 438 internship the other intern and I collaborated on blog posts, and those posts don’t exist on the organization’s website anymore, they got rid of their old blog. Luckily I have some copies that I saved for the class. Another type of product you might create are guidelines or documentation for a process. I interned with the Digital Archivist at MIT and helped her to build their transfer and ingest procedures, and we collaborated on a best practices guide. Those are valuable skills too.
- Whether your internship has been organized by your graduate program or if you are designing it with the institution, it’s important for both parties to know and agree upon the parameters of the internship. If you were provided with a written description via an internship program or are responding to a job description, go over it with your internship supervisor, ask questions, make sure you are interpreting the description correctly, and find out if there will be opportunities to do things you are interested in that aren’t listed in the description. If you are designing this internship on your own, make a written agreement with your internship supervisor. Find out what they expect of you, and let them know what you want out of the internship. Discuss that final product. Will your name appear on it? This might seem like an obvious thing, but it’s not always. In my 438 internship I was part of a multi-semester group of interns who processed a huge collection. The final finding aid, create a few semesters after my internship, did not include any of our names, despite the fact that our data was a source for the final refined product. Beyond my own files I have no proof that I worked on that project. Figure out how much the internship supervisor will actually be supervising you – will they be nearby? Is there documentation or processing guidelines to follow, or will you be creating that together? And also, find out if you will only be working on one single project, or if you will be invited to learn about other aspects of the institution. Depending on your experience level, it might be really desirable that you also get to be a part of how the archives runs in some way. A lot of internships allow for that, and it’s good to know if yours will, and decide how you feel about that. Donna Webber and Jeannette Bastian’s book about internships has a sample internship agreement that you can use as a model if you want one. I don’t know if she uses this for internships at Simmons now or not. But if you want a copy of it, send me an email and I can scan it for you (or if you’re a student they probably have the book at the library, or you could ask her about it and she might provide you with one).
- Occasionally you will come across an internship that is paid. These are regrettably rare and they are a great opportunity. I managed to get a paid internship right before I got my full-time job. Why was this position paid? The collection in question was actually only for the use of the donor, who wanted copies of the materials. The archivist negotiated with him and he gave money for the collection to be digitized, including a budget to hire an intern. Which was pretty canny of her. How did I manage to get it? Here’s a few factors that went into it: It was in a slightly out of the way location that happened to be easy for me to access. This isn’t something you have control over. But keep an eye out for places that are near you. It was a digitization project and I had been working in a scanning lab, mostly doing interlibrary loans, but also sometimes scanning archival materials. The archivist supervising this internship said I was the only person with scanning experience who applied. I prepared for interviewing for the internship the way I did for all my job interviews and was able to persuade the archivist that I would be a reliable person for the internship. All of these factors colluded together to make me an ideal fit for the internship. In short, I was very lucky. There were downsides to this internship. Because it was a project for the donor, my digitized materials haven’t as yet made it online. There wasn’t infrastructure in place for a big digitization project so I had to learn on my feet. But I had a wonderful time, I was proud of my work, and it helped me learn a lot about what kind of archives I would ultimately like to work in, if I am lucky enough to get the chance.
- “Graduate internships without any form of compensation should be rare to avoid devaluing the professional nature of archival work.” The thing with archival internships is that because it’s important you are getting professional-level work, it’s easy for institutions to replace paid positions with internships in order to get more work done with a small budget. But there are problems with this. What does “devaluing the professional nature of archival work” mean? It means that when professional archival work is done primarily by people who aren’t being paid, we are telling the world that our work doesn’t merit being paid. Why should any institution hire any archivist then? Also, when an institution is reliant on unpaid interns or volunteers – or to be honest, a succession of temporary employees – they are losing a lot of institutional knowledge, because when that person leaves – internship work is by nature temporary and transient – they take with them all the knowledge they’ve accumulated about the collections they’ve worked on. If you’ve ever worked in a place with long-standing employees, you know that there is a huge a value in someone who knows the collections inside out. “SAA recognizes that some professionals may investigate additional post-graduate internships … and recommends participants receive fair compensation.” Because post-graduate internships have no oversight, there is more of an opportunity for them to cross the line into unsuitable and unfair practices. Interns can easily be taken advantage of. If you think that an institution is doing you a huge favor by letting you intern there for free after you graduate, and that it will lead to some kind of paid position – well, that can happen, but here’s a cautionary tale – at SAA’s annual meeting last month I met a former classmate of mine who is on her fifth internship since completing her MLIS around the same time I did (in 2013). Lots of people will tell you that you have to get out there and intern and volunteer your heart out until you get a paid job. Internships and volunteer work are important aspects of your career plan but they are not a guarantee of a job. And you also shouldn’t feel badly if they don’t lead to a job for you. It doesn’t mean there is something wrong with you, or that you will never get a job in the archives field.
- Before we leave the topic of internships, I just want to return to the topic of legal regulation of internships. Many of you might have heard about changes in recent years in how internships are recognized by the government, and wondered how that effects the types of internships we do. The answer to this lies in the types of institutions we work for. Most archival institutions are non-profit, which means the Fair Labor Standards Act does not apply to them. They exist in a sort of gray area – that’s why SAA has made guidelines, but those guidelines are not required to be followed. However, some archives internships might be a with a private sector, for profit institution – generally corporate archives. Those archives’s internships would have to follow the law, which would mean that in order to be unpaid, they have to meet the following criteria: The internship meets the standards of education training It is solely for the benefit of the intern and the employer does not receive immediate advantage from the internship; It does displace a regular paid position; The intern doesn’t have an expectation of a job at the end; and it is understood that the intern will not be monetarily compensated. If the internship doesn’t meet those criteria, than in a private sector for-profit job, the “intern” needs to be paid minimum wage.
- Now let’s move on to volunteering. Once again, there are some gray areas in volunteering, and SAA has a best practices guide for what they think is appropriate use of archives volunteers. Many, many archives institutions only survive on volunteer work. There’s no easy solution to this. Archives and cultural heritage institutions are underfunded and their budgets are tight. But as a potential archives volunteer, who also wants to one day be paid for archival work, it’s important to be aware of what your volunteer work means in the wider sphere, how to volunteer responsibly and meaningfully. In short: Value your skills, your education, and what it means to be an archivist.
- Why volunteer? A lot of people think you should volunteer in order to learn how to do archival work, but that’s really what an internship for – but it’s true that it will also give you a chance to learn that. But you should think about volunteer work in other dimensions. Some of the types of volunteering possibilities I will outline to you will be good ways to network and meet other professionals; to experience what archival work is like at different types of institutions, so that you can find out where you would like to work; they can build your resume, but not just in ways that add experience, but also depth and breadth; and they also give you the chance to become involved in charity work and get leadership experience, which you might not have an opportunity to do in paid work for awhile.
- The first way of volunteering I suggest is taking part in days of service or community service projects. This is a low-time commitment, one-time thing, but it’s very valuable. You sign up for a shift or two and come in to work on a specific project. You are working in a group with other volunteers, and so you will get to meet and interact with archivists of different backgrounds, with different levels of experience, and you’ll have the chance to learn from them (including learning about their institutions and the way they do things), as well as learn about the place you are volunteering at. Often these institutions will have you working with materials you might not have had a chance to encounter before in your internships, and you might get a chance to learn new processes and techniques.
- There is usually a day of service project on the day preceding the New England Archivists spring meetings. I participated in the day of service at Portsmouth Public Library in Spring 2014 and it was a great experience. There should be one before the meeting in Portland this spring so sign up when the chance arises! And REPS, the roundtable I’m on the steering committee for, also started an annual day of service last year. Our day of service involves multiple institutions around New England that host volunteers for one day. This year’s day of service is open for registration right now and will take place on October 17. There’s two Boston locations, a location in western Massachusetts, one in Connecticut, and one in Vermont. In encourage you to check them out and sign up for the one that appeals to you. I know that the Vermont location is in need of volunteers, which might be a fun road trip – the sign up sheet includes space for arranging car sharing.
- Next up are some types of organizations that I would recommend focusing on if you want to volunteer on a regular basis. I recommend focusing on what I guess I would call “independent” archives, meaning they aren’t necessarily attached to a big institution, they are focused around a group or event, and they are often grassroots efforts organized by volunteers. One example of this is Our Marathon, which collects digital media and oral histories about the Marathon Bombings. Though it’s a larger archives than most of these projects are, it’s not run by archivists, and it’s a crowd-sourced archives. I know a lot of archivists and Simmons students participated in the early stages of the development of this archives. Another is the History Project, which collects materials on Boston’s LGBTQ citizens and is all volunteer-run. It’s one of the organizations taking part in REPS’s day of service so if you volunteer for that, you might get a sense of how it’s run. You can also look outside of the immediate area of “archives” and branch out a little. It won’t brand you as not being an archivist or anything, it will just show that you are a community-minded individual who is involved in a variety of activities. So in that case I’ve included the Papercut Zine Library, which is also all volunteer run. I think I read that their collections are currently in storage, but once they have found a new home for them I am sure they will need help. And then there is the Prison Book Program, which asks for volunteers to help them select and pack up books for incarcerated individuals. This is a cool charitable project that I was about to get involved in before I got offered a full-time job and suddenly discovered I had zero time to spare – but I’d still like to take part in it someday.
- Another possibility is to go out there and create your own archives or organization. Is there an event, population, activity, or cause you think needs to be documented? Look for other like-minded archivists and work together on building a collection and making it available. Or there may be a cause related to archives and archivists that you feel passionate about. Here’s two examples: ProjectARCC (Archivists Responding to Climate Change) is a non-profit recently started up by a group of early professionals in order to highlight how climate change impacts archives and how archivists should engage with the topic. They recently hosted a pop-up session at this year’s SAA meeting. Meghan Bailey, one of my former Simmons classmates and co-workers, first got involved volunteering for the Occupy Boston library, and then worked together with the movement’s leaders to collect and preserve materials, including legal documentation. She published an article about it in SAA’s Archival Outlook. She now works as the Processing Archivist at Umass Boston’s Open Archives. These are great things to put on your resume, and in some of these opportunities you might have the chance to design and run parts of the program, which is invaluable experience. I also think that being involved in organizations like this can sometimes take your career down paths you wouldn’t expect. You might find yourself presenting at a conference about your work there, or writing about it in a journal, like Meghan did. It can lead to someone hiring you for a position because your experience with a particular type of organization has a connection with their institution and collections. One thing leads to another.
- Another excellent way to volunteer your time – though you may not have thought of it in these terms before, that’s really what it is – is to get involved in a professional organization. Volunteer to be on a committee, serve on a roundtable or section, volunteer for a spot on a task force, help plan an event – these are all excellent ways to gain many of the benefits you also gain from internships and volunteering, and you will also have a chance to be involved in the wider sphere of the archiving profession. REPS’s steering committee, which I serve on, will actually be having elections some time this winter, with two-year terms of office starting in the spring. Here’s some of the things that I’ve been involved in since being elected to the steering committee: I have written many blog posts, interviewed people, live tweeted conferences, organized and led days of service, organized and attended meet ups, led meetings with other archivists, presented at an NEA meeting in a session sponsored by our roundtable, organized repository tours, and was approached to teach this workshop. So that’s just one example of how many doors serving in these kinds of positions can open for you. For a lot of these positions, you need to just wait until the organization in question sends out a call for volunteers, though you can also always contact someone to find out if there are positions available. Basically, keep your eye open for something that interests you.
- When you pursuing these opportunities please keep in mind that committing to too many things will not help you. It will just make you feel burned out and depressed. Think carefully about how much time you will have to commit to each activity you want to do. If you are also working to support yourself, don’t scale back your hours in order to volunteer or intern, unless you really think you can afford it. Think about how much time you need for job searching and preparing your applications – that’s the most important thing you have to do. And give yourself some downtime, too. Take care of yourself so that you are at your best when you are working, volunteering, or interviewing for jobs.
- I want to speak really briefly about residencies and fellowships. They fall somewhere between internships and entry-level paid positions. They are designed to train and educate, but are also prestigious and competitive. Their application processes are rigorous. They are temporary. But they are an excellent avenue to explore; they can really get your career started; and even if you don’t get one, you can learn a lot just from the application process, which can involve you making portfolios of your work and really evaluating yourself. Here are a few residency programs I know of that are in this area. MIT has a bi-yearly program – they’re currently beginning the second year of a round of fellowships – in revolving departments. Currently they have a digital archives fellow and you can check out her blog where she is chronicling her experience in the program if you want to find out more about it. When they choose what the next fellows’ responsibilities will be, they’ll post a call for applications, so keep you eye out for that in the next year. The National Digital Residency Stewardship Program offers fellowships in the Boston every year through a variety of institutions. Some of the places that have hosted fellows in the last few years have included MIT, Harvard, WGBH, and the JFK Library. The ACRL Residency Interest Group posts links to residencies around the country, so it’s a good place to look for more opportunities. And the ARL/SAA Mosaic Program offers fellowships to new archivists and students are from underrepresented groups.
- Let’s move on now to educational opportunities. Since you are enrolled in this workshop, you are probably familiar with the other ones NEA offers. SAA just recently had a bunch of workshops which were hosted at Boston College this summer; the next one they are teaching in the New England area will be during the NEA Spring Meeting in Portland, Maine. NEDCC also hosts many workshops and webinars on preservation which might be useful in supplementing your education – here are just two that I selected as being pretty relevant to us. And ALCTS offers more library-based webinars which you might want to check out. All of these cost money. There are also others ways to try to build your education.
- Not exactly an alternative – at least not at this point – but a complement – are free online MOOCs, which are large online courses taught by professors from universities around the world. So these aren’t classes from the University of Phoenix – but rather, places like Harvard, Stanford, Duke, etc. They are USUALLY free, though increasingly they are being monetized. Sometimes there are some courses that cost money; other times they try to convince you to do a specialization or earn a certificate, but you don’t have to. They might last between 2-6 weeks, or they might be self-paced and you have a whole year to do the work. The course is completed through watching video lectures, participating in discussions, and of course, readings and assignments. Now, I said these courses are “complementary” to our profession, and that’s because not a lot of library schools or archives programs have gotten in on this, unfortunately. Why? I think it may have something to do with library schools often having their own online degree programs that they’d rather have students take, but I hope that some of them start to see the professional development opportunity MOOCs present. In any case, there are a number of important skills relevant to our career which you can take MOOCs in. Here are a couple!
- edX is a non-profit initiative co-run by Harvard and MIT. There are many, many interesting courses here, especially in the realm of computer science, but there has also been a course on Library Advocacy in the past which is archived, and if you enroll in it you can view all of the materials. And Harvard is about to offer a series of self-paced courses – meaning you have a year to work at your own rate through the materials – on the history of the book. One of them apparently includes “behind the scenes” of Harvard Libraries! Those all start September 21. There are also a number of courses on computer science. Project management is something else you might want to look into – one of the things I frequently hear from archivists that they wish they had more training in is management.
- Coursera is another website that offers MOOCs, but it’s a private company and more heavily focused on making money. Still, there are a lot of free courses, especially in the realms of technology education. Some of them are very introductory; others are more advanced, if you already know a programming language or two and want to increase your experience. Here are a couple of upcoming courses I found that you might be interested in. Here’s an unexpected issue that I just encountered: there was an excellent Metadata course available on Coursera, taught by Jeffrey Pomerantz of UNC-Chapel Hill’s Information School. It was offered multiple times, but suddenly disappeared from the website – even an archived version was no longer available. I went to Dr. Pomerantz’s twitter account to find an explanation, and it turned out that he left UNC-Chapel Hill to write a book (about metadata of course, it will be published soon by MIT Press) and consequently his course materials were taken down. He encouraged potential students to tell the director of the iSchool that they would like a course on metadata on Coursera again. But that’s a problem with these websites you should all be aware of – this stuff might not be available forever, there are issues with copyright, website redesign, monetization, etc. that could dramatically change the learning environment.
- Outside of courses, there are other ways of acquiring skills that might be more convenient for you. RailsBridgeBoston is an organization that teaches the Ruby and Ruby on Rails programming language in usually biyearly workshops that last all day on a Saturday. These workshops are primarily for women and are focused on creating a safe space for women to learn programming. However, men can attend the workshops if they come as a guest of a woman. The workshops are announced via a mailing list you can sign up for on their website, and they fill up very quickly. They are held in the Kendall Square area and you need to bring a laptop with you to participate. CodeAcademy is a website that has gamified learning code. It’s a good introduction to several coding languages, including HTML, PHP, SQL, Python, and JavaScript. It teaches you how to code by making it into a game. Similarly DuoLingo has done the same with learning languages. You might think that being fluent in another language isn’t the most relevant skill, but it can give you a edge. I’ve seen a number of job advertisements for positions which list fluency in a particular language as a preferred qualification. A former classmate of mine from Simmons got her dream job in an archives in California because she is fluent in Polish. It’s certainly something you should consider. If you have studied a language in the past, DuoLingo is also a good way to brush up on and practice that language.
- The last thing I am going to recommend to you is to consider publication. It’s not as scary as it sounds. First, let’s think about what you might write about. If you are a student, you have already been writing a lot for your courses – if there is something you are particularly proud of, approach your professor and ask for advice about what you must do to prepare it for publication. You can also write about events and projects you’ve taken part in. Or, if there is some particular aspect about the profession which is extremely important to you, find an angle to focus on and write about. And finally, you can do what I have tended to do, and talk endlessly about what it’s like to be an early professional. It’s an important topic and it’s a shared experience between many, many people.
- One great place to start is the NEA Newsletter. Every fall and spring when there is an NEA meeting, they send emails out asking for session reporters. All you have to do is claim a session, attend the meeting, take copious notes, and write a 250 or so word summary of it, and ta-da! You have a publication under your belt. Another great part of the newsletter to investigate is the Inclusion and Diversity Coordinator’s new column, “Who’s Missing From This Table?” which focuses on underrepresented populations in the archival profession. One recent article that ran in the column was by Alyson Glazier and it was about how contingent employment – temporary and project archivist positions – impacts new professionals and the institutions they work for.
- A great way to break into writing about the profession is to start with blogs. REPS has a blog – I run it – and we are always looking for submissions. You could review an archives-related book, share some of your experiences and insights, or talk about a repository you’ve worked or interned at. And if any of you run for my seat on the steering committee, maybe this time next year you’ll be running it! SNAP, SAA’s Students and New Professionals roundtable, also has a blog. Right now they are still looking for session reports for SAA, if you attended it this year. They have a spreadsheet where you can sign up to review a session you reported on. I believe the deadline to submit the session reports is September 25. And I would also urge you to check out Hack Library School and I Need A Library job’s blogs. There are some pretty incredible articles and resources on those websites that were extremely helpful to me when I was job searching, and it’s a great arena to take a stab at getting your writing out there. You can also start up your own blog! It’s a good way to practice writing about professional issues until you feel comfortable sending your work out to others.
- And here is a handy list of other places to publish, including print and online journals which might require more work. The spreadsheet includes links and some notes about the nature of the publications. This list was compiled by Chris Markman, one of the ex-officio members of the REPS steering committee, as part of a working group on Research and Publishing that he helped to run, and which has gone dormant recently. But if publishing is something you are very interested in, let me know and I will give you his contact information and you can get in touch with him. Maybe it can be revived in the future.
- Before you start writing, here’s a few things you should keep in mind. If you’re going to write about an institution or their collections, you need to check with them first to make sure it’s okay to publish about them, especially if you want to include any pictures. Likewise be aware of any copyright issues associated with images, quotes, or videos you are employing. Always be sure that the place you are submitting your work to is the appropriate location for it; read what others have written for it to get a sense for kind of writing they want. Most places will also have rules about submitting – not just how to submit, but length of the piece, what kind of citations they want you to use, etc. And finally, getting the opinion of other archivists is always helpful. You could speak to a professor, someone you work with, or you might get a group of common-minded archivists together and you guys could work together to get your writing polished. Besides just building your resume, writing and publishing is a good way to become part of the archives conversation. It’s also a wonderful way to contribute and give back to the community and try to help other early professionals.
- My last words: I encourage you to look into funding to aid in your professional development. You’d be surprised, but some of these awards get very few applicants, sometimes NO applicants. It never hurts to apply, the worst thing that can happen is you don’t get it. So you might have heard about this, and maybe even applied or received one, but the blog ArchivesNext, run by Kate Theimer, has for the last few years run a spontaneous scholarship to fund registrations for SAA’s annual meeting. Every spring, Kate solicits donations from archivists, and then invites people who need help with registration fees to submit their names to her, and then she randomly chooses as many people as she can to receive scholarships. You must be an SAA member – you can be either a student or an full member. You can only receive a scholarship once. You still have to pay for travel and lodging fees. But if you can manage it I highly recommend trying to get one! I actually received on this year and was able to attend SAA in Cleveland last month because of it. It’s a pretty amazing experience I met Dennis Meissner! SAA also has a number of awards and scholarships for travel and professional development; these are pretty heavily publicized so you have probably heard about them, but I recommend really looking at them and giving it a go. And then, locally, NEA hosts a number of scholarships. You can get money to take courses and workshops – there’s one specifically for Audiovisual topics and one that could cover anything. You can also get money to travel to an NEA meeting. The spring meeting is in Portland, Maine which might be a bit of a hike for some people, so consider applying to one of these if you need assistance! If you check out my slides online, there will also be some additional links to resources and also articles about some of the topics I’ve talked about here. I hope you take some of this information and go forth and do battle for your career!