Last year, while attending the Missouri Library Association’s (MLA) annual conference in Springfield, MO, on the last day I had an idea.
There should be a session for job seekers to come together and share their experiences. It could be support group for people to share the struggles and encouragements of the job searching process.
I tweeted this idea out using the conference hashtag and got the largest positive response to anything I’d posted over the course of the conference. Clearly, I was on to something.
Missouri is peculiar in that they have two state-wide library conferences. MLA’s is in October, and the other one, the MOBIUS Annual Conference, happens in June. When the call for sessions for the MOBIUS conference came out in the winter I jumped on the chance and submitted my Job Seeker’s Support Group idea to them, only to be denied the chance. Later, in the spring, I submitted the idea again when MLA called for sessions.
Then, I forgot about it.
Then, I moved to Las Vegas.
Then, yesterday, I received notice that my session proposal for MLA has been accepted.
Yay!
and Hah!
The good news is that I can present a session at a professional conference, and that since I’ve recently taken a better job after years of searching I will have some authority on the matter.
The bad news is that since I’m new to this job and it’s 1,600 miles away from the St. Louis conference location I don’t know that I’ll be able to do it.
I’ve opened talks with my superiors to see if this is possible, and I suspect that it might be. I don’t think there is a downside to me attending a non-Nevada statewide conference as a UNLV representative. It’s good for me to get the experience and CV line, and it’s good for them as a function of outreach. My biggest fear is that I’ll have to choose between doing MLA in October and the Access Services Conference in November. I really want to do both but don’t know if that will be possible.
So, fingers crossed for getting to add to the fabulous experience that is MLA.
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Tales of a Librarian 