Proceedings of the First National Joint Conference of Librarians of Color - 202

is based in three things. First, how we do our primary job? How I perform as dean or how somebody performs as a reference librarian. Second, is our scholarly activity. I would tell you that all of my scholarly activity came as a result of my involvement in different aspects of ALA and ACRL. That’s where I got my research interest. That’s where I was able to network and collaborate with people to publish. The third area is service. In academic libraries, we get paid to do this. And what I mean by that is it’s part of our job. That’s the third area we are evaluated on. So if you’re involved professionally, if you have good scholarship and you perform your job well, then you hopefully can increase your pay. Now in order for us to do that they pay for us to be involved. Not to the extent that we would love to get reimbursed but that’s part of our job. And that’s the beauty of academic librarianship. So being involved, being interested and involved helps you with your job, helps you to get hired, helps you with a network to do both. Helps you with your scholarship, your scholarly activity and helps you with your service record. I mean that’s why I stayed in academic libraries because that’s my job to do these three things. Service to professional organizations is one of the three things. So I’m hoping at least from the academic library point of view that you look at getting involved in ALA because it helps you personally and it helps you professionally and you can make a difference. Moderator: Patty. Wong: Actually, what Camila just alluded to also follows very closely to the benefits for anyone involved in public librarianship as well. Making a difference is part of the reason we’re all in the room I think. The other thing about getting involved in ALA is I think Satia (Orange) said very eloquently yesterday in a session is “we are ALA.” And to have a voice we need to participate. And to have a voice you need to be on Council or part of the elective process. Your participation is really an investment in the profession. It really is. There’s no doubt that the resume or the vitae building element that comes around with all of our experiences does help us to become mentors to others. It helps for us to be mentored by others as well. I’m mentored by each of these women on the panel and I’m sure that Laurel will do that too. I’m also mentored by many, many people in the audience and I hope to get to know you all better. There’s something that I would say to all of you. A commitment to your profession begins with your professional organization. I can’t stress that enough. We need you and we all need one another. The other thing I guess I would also suggest that Laurel brought up is auditing meetings at ALA whether Midwinter or Annual. It’s a very fine way to try to get a glimpse of what’s expected from you on a committee. Check it out really carefully before you want to jump whole body into the experience. We have lots of folks who came to Executive Board meetings, and Council and Membership and various meetings within ALA before they got involved. And I think that’s a much more prudent way to go about determining where you find your niche. Chu: I teach a core course that’s entitled, “Ethics of Diversity and Change in the Information Professions”. In this course, we look at all of the different library associations and look at their professional code of ethics. One of the things the students are able to do is to assess their own personal ethics and to see if it really corresponds well with their professional ethics. It allows them to see if they have the same values or not. And if they do great! If they don’t then how can they deal with that difference? The other aspect of the library and information education program at UCLA is that students have to write a portfolio and present it. Part of this portfolio is to write a description of their professional leadership as well as their professional development. So there are two opportunities in our program for them to determine what their professional identity is. So I think that by joining ALA, by becoming active in ALA they are able to identify their own professional identity. Then they build on those other aspects that we talked about such as networking and finding other opportunities to grow. It’s important having others share about their job opportunities. To know that apart from what they do they’re other things that other librarians are doing. What I wanted to also talk about is that there are lots of different opportunities at ALA where there aren’t as 202

Proceedings of the First National Joint Conference of Librarians of Color

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