Category: jobs

How to Be Generous Without Being a Doormat

Takers, Givers, Matchers, Smart Givers Align Their Giving With Self-Interest, Be Instrumental, Network Like a Giver, Listen More, Ask Questions, Refer, Include, Thanks, Follow-up, No. No is a complete sentence.At ALA Annual I teamed up with Leo S. Lo to present Giving to Get Ahead: How to Be Generous Without Being a Doormat. When someone asked me what the presentation was about, and if it would be relevant to them since they worked in a public library, I told them it was about how to say no. Libraries attract people who want to help others, but it’s important that givers do so strategically so that they don’t burn out and so that the person they are trying to help gets what they need (when possible).

You can read about our presentation, and others from the ACRL program track, in the most recent issue of C&RL News. I will add the download link for the slides here once they are loaded in our institutional repository. If you attended ALA Annaul you can listen to the audio or watch the video by logging in to the conference website.

Edit 2/10/2019: Slides Download Link

For those who weren’t able to attend ALA we recently did a free webinar with the same material through the ACRL Leadership DG which is posted to YouTube.

Edit: 2/10/2019: You may also be interested in our presentation from 2017 at ALA Annual: What They Don’t Teach You in Library School: Using Emotional Intelligence to Succeed as Academic Librarians of Color I would also like to clarify that these techniques aren’t unique to Academic Librarians of Color. We chose this title because we believe Emotional Intelligence (EI) helps people to have the best experience possible. If you are in a bad situation EI will not miraculously make it better, but it can help you navigate the situation until you can get somewhere better.

Recent publications include:

Burks, R., Page, S., Deards, K. D., Barnes, J. (2018). Chemists Atwitter. In Sorensen-Unruh, C. & Gupta, T. (Eds.), Communicating Chemistry through Social Media, ACS Symposium Series, (19-34). Washington, D.C: American Chemical Society. PDF: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/libraryscience/367/

Burks, R., Deards, K., Defrain, E. (2017). Where science intersects pop culture: An informal science educational outreach program. Journal of Chemical Education, 94(12), 1918-1924. Link: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jchemed.7b00070

See you at ALA 2017

Headshot picture of Kiyomi Deards smiling
Headshot image of Leo S. Lo with glassess, smiling.

If you’re headed for ALA consider joining Leo Lo and I at What They Don’t Teach You in Library School: Using Emotional Intelligence to Succeed as Academic Librarians of Color 4;30pm-5:30pm, Saturday June 24, 2017, McCormick Place, W187b. The program is open to all.

Abstract: Librarians of color enter the workforce prepared to fulfill technical, interpersonal, service, or scholarship duties but are often blindsided by institutional, systemic, or social factors surrounding race, color, religion, or ethnicity. Experienced academic librarians of color will share personal anecdotes and use the frameworks of emotional intelligence and career capital to help participants learn strategies to succeed in their jobs, craft actionable plans to achieve their career goals, and connect with their peers.

Not able to join us? The program will be recorded by ALA. We’ll also be adding the slides for the presentation, with some light speaker notes, and more related resources to the presentation web page about a week after ALA: http://www.leoslo.com/resources-ala2017-eq/