Things to do when you're in library school...with an eye to when you get out.

I'm fortunate to have an Emporia State MLIS student on my student worker staff, and to have had a UBC SLAIS MLIS student as an intern over the summer. I love working with library students--in my experience, most people who want to be librarians are pretty super to know.

Since it's the start of fall term and I'm thinking about students, student workers, and interns a lot, I thought I'd post a few suggestions for those of us who are working on MLIS degrees and looking towards graduation...

• Diversify, diversify, diversify! Get as much experience doing as many different things as you can while you're a student. I never really thought I was headed for a career in serials librarianship or cataloging, but I went to NASIG and it was a great experience (hint: they have scholarships!) I didn't feel drawn to children's librarianship, but I took a great children's literature course with Judith Saltman. The more things you try, the better your ability to judge what you really do like doing.
  
• Build your skills in the areas that interest you most. A friend in library school once said, "Don't get good at doing something you don't like to do." Truer words were never spoken--if you hate database work, don't market yourself as a database person. Simple, but important.
• Take advantage of training at your institution. Most universities have offices of Instructional Development, or Teaching Excellence, or what have you. They're designed to help people learn pedagogical skills, and sometimes they're willing to work with graduate students too. When I was a student I took a short course at UBC's teaching skills office, and saw a videotape of myself working in the classroom. Humbling...but useful.
• Take advantage of resources at your institution. Not just the books in the library--find out if there's an institutional subscription to Safari or Lynda.com. These offer technical skills training (Safari is online books, Lynda.com is tutorials) that will help you bone up on your Adobe Creative Suite, Microsoft Office, PHP, and other skills that will set you apart from the crowd.
• Get a job. Or an internship. Get several if you possibly can. I worked many library-related jobs during my MLIS degree, and I was grateful for every single one of them. I got the chance to work in a public library, in several different kinds of reference departments, in classroom instruction, in computer lab support, in an archive... You get the picture. It all gave me a great set of experiences to draw on when I started my real job search--and helped me learn what I was most interested in doing in the long-term.
• Connect with the university's career center. I've learned a lot over the last few years about professional job searches, and it's not all intuitive or easy stuff. Some of it--negotiation, public presentations--takes practice. It takes a while to get comfortable with the idea of yourself as a professional with valuable skills to offer. It takes time to figure out what your own professional style and demeanor will be. And it can be a big help for someone to tell you, point-blank, that you need to bring a pen and paper to your interview, that you should research the institution ahead of time, that you should have questions prepared, that you should shake hands....

Being a student is pretty terrific, even if it's also exhausting. You have time, you have the resources of your institution--be sure you use them. And if you have more job-prep tips to offer readers of this blog, please add them in the comments. I'd love to hear them!