One of the things that has been on my mind recently is something that I hadn’t really considered while I was working at my government job: networking. Before moving to this new position in academia, I worked very much in the background of the library, and I had no reason to really network. It wasn’t so much that we weren’t allowed to work with people out of government, it was more that I really never had an opportunity to do so and didn’t see that changing in the future. After all, I had no plans to leave the government so why waste energy on something that is probably not all that useful to my career? Sure, there was still some internal relationship building to do, but the actual work of meeting people was largely out of my hands at a certain point; only so many people worked at the library!

Now that I’m on campus at a smaller university, networking is something that is front and center. For one thing, I’m finding that on this small campus works on a very relational basis. A lot of people have been around a long time and have relationships all across the university, which makes networking a key skill. When everyone seems to know each other, trying to forge relationships with the various departments is very daunting to an outsider. Luckily for me, my colleagues have been very helpful in helping break the ice. I’ve slowly been meeting lots of people across the university, but now comes to the work of building and maintaining relationships. Many of the people that I’ve been meeting are high-ups, so I’m still gauging how to work with them. Coming from a strongly hierarchical structure in government may be coloring my perception though; everyone has been very welcoming so far. We’ll see how this goes as time goes on - I’m sure that I’ll write more about that in the future.

In addition to the internal networking, I’ve also been considering how to network outside of the university, to meet other academic librarians working elsewhere. I’ve chatted a bit with a few of my fellow librarians (Bluesky has been my main method), but I figure that I need to go further and find “my group”. But that is easier said than done!

Professional organizations are one method to utilize, and I think I will join a few. ACRL is one that has been suggested, and it probably fits my bit of the library sphere, so consider that a strong contender. Then to go with that, probably a state-level organziation as well.

Of course, I am still taking suggestions! I don’t have any sort of commenting feature enable on this blog (considering whether to actually look into setting that up or not), but you can always send those to me via Bluesky (or email once I set it up correctly - I want to try and limit spam). And of course, you can always chat with me about whatever, especially once I fill out the About Me page better so you actually know what I’m all about!

Thanks for reading my ramblings.

-Rob