Welcome to our new feature, round table discussions! These are SNAP Roundtable round tables on various aspects of new archival careers. This month sees Isaac Fellman and Gayle Schechter discussing professional communities and networking with questions provided by Laura Bell. We had our conversation in May 2018 and talked about the different ways students and new professionals can get more involved in the archives community, grow professional communities, and network with less pressure! With the annual SAA conference in Austin, TX around the corner, this is a great time to think about ways you can get more involved and meet new friends. We hope you enjoy reading about our round table discussion!
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Laura:
Hi Isaac and Gayle! Thanks for participating today! Developing professional communities and networking can be daunting for grad students and new professionals. It takes time to develop these skills. During this roundtable I’d like us to talk about ways you’ve learned to network and build professional communities over time. If you’re still working on it, even better! So, how would you define a professional community? What does that look like or mean to you?
Gayle:
To me, it includes folks at all levels, from students to those in the field 10+ years. There are many in my professional community who I socialize with, and some I lean on to ask career and work related questions
Isaac:
Friends with slightly higher and more formal boundaries, honestly. My archives connections and community consists of people who share some of my background and obsessions, who I’ve met at work and conferences, with whom I will readily grouse (you know, the process by which policy is eventually made).I am also a fantasy writer, and for me, networking is very similar across the two careers. All about the con scene.
Gayle:
I also include library professionals outside of archives in mine. A few friends of mine from library school have a Slack channel we use for resume/cover-letter proofreading, job questions, and just to vent
Laura:
That makes sense. So how did you go about building these communities? Many of us meet and make connections with people we’ve worked with or gone to school with. The archivists and librarians who taught and trained me at work and at school became my mentors and friends. Was it the same for you?
Gayle:
I first started building my community from people I went to school with, and it’s branched out from there to meeting people at conferences, getting involved in my local professional organization and people I work with. Yes, I’d say most of my mentors have either been my professors and supervisors at work.
Isaac:
My classmates were the first ones! (We groused about school). Then came my first archives boss, and later friend. (We groused about the collections.) My first job found money in our grant to send me to a conference, where I cold-started a lot of conversations (with people who probably then groused about me, but it lowered my anxieties about putting myself out there as an archivist — plus, I helped them bond by giving them something to grouse about). A lot of folks since have just been co-workers and friends of friends. Early archival careers involve moving around a lot, so you collect ex-co-workers. Oh, and SNAP — and archives Twitter.
Laura:
How did getting involved in a local organization work / help you? Were you able to attend regular meetings?
Gayle:
When it comes to professional organizations, I just volunteered for committees. Some positions require voting, but a lot of committees you can just sign up to help with, which is a great, no-pressure way to get involved.
My current SGA (Society of GA Archivists) committee meets virtually since we’re spread out across the state.
Isaac:
I’m not really involved in local organizations! Just SAA. But I have been introduced to local archivists and librarians through existing archives friends – actually, both as an archivist and as a writer. Honestly, once you have a couple of friends in this field (and that will happen naturally if you bond with a few co-workers), you’ll suddenly know more people. I promise.
Isaac:
I knew nobody two years ago, and now I feel like I have a lot of connections and contacts. Oh — also, I never stopped doing informational interviews, if I had a professional question about someone’s area of expertise.
Laura:
I can hardly keep up! This is great advice!
So what advice would you give lone arrangers or people working without co-archivists? There are a few out there, and it seems that being a lone arranger could be very isolating for new professionals.
Gayle:
Definitely try and join up with your state/regional archives professionals organization! In addition to our annual meeting SGA’s outreach committee holds social events throughout the year. The other week we went on a walking tour of Piedmont Park and it’s a nice way to get to know other professionals in a relaxed setting. Plus, they’re usually pretty inexpensive for membership.
Isaac:
Oh, my gosh, totally what Gayle said. I used to be a lone arranger in a town too small for local orgs and really too small for it to be safe for grousing. That’s when SNAP came in handy, and also I still made sure to meet all, like, three local archivists and talk about our work occasionally.
Laura:
That makes sense. Social events seem like a more relaxed way to meet people too. Can you also tell me a bit more about how SAA SNAP and Twitter have helped you?
Gayle:
Getting involved with SNAP has been a great intro to the ins and outs of SAA leadership in addition to working with folks across the country on different ways to advocate for students and new professionals. I’m pretty active on Twitter and follow a lot of library/archives people, but I find it to be more casual. Although I’ve definitely met some folks IRL at conferences that I follow on Twitter which is always pretty great.
Isaac:
Twitter will get people on your radar and help you start conversations. I do think that for friendship to develop, you do have to meet or correspond less publicly, though. But it’s an engine for generating affection and interest in other people. SNAP wasn’t a huge part of my life when I was lone arranger, but I valued the monthly meetings just to hear people talk who shared my extremely weird job that I otherwise had to explain to people.
Laura:
So I know the stereotype is that we’re all a bunch of introverts. But I’ve always found archivists and librarians to be very warm people who want to help each other. Have you found your community to be similarly open or did it take some trial and error to find your people?
Gayle:
I consider myself to be more of an ambivert, so socializing does tend to come pretty easy to me, but it takes a lot out of me and I enjoy my alone time. I usually need a couple days away from people to recover after conferences! I’d say there are a range of folks I’ve encountered at conferences, some are very open and gregarious, others a bit more shy or reserved. For me, I haven’t had too many issues connecting with new people, but I realize that everyone is different in that regard.
Isaac:
I may have been lucky, but I did find that doors were open to me — although they opened a lot wider once I had a professional job. When I was presenting myself primarily as a student, I felt people didn’t take me seriously. Could be projecting there, though. I also didn’t take myself as seriously.
Gayle:
No, I think that’s pretty common actually, which can be pretty unfortunate. I’ve heard some real horror stories from folks but I like to think that snobbish behavior is rare among archivists. Or at least I hope it is!
Laura:
Yea, being a student at a conference or in a room full of people with professional positions can be intimidating enough without that.
So I want to circle back to mentoring for a minute: Have you ever tried a formal mentorship program (like the one offered by SAA)?
Gayle:
Yes, I signed up for a mentor through SAA while I was still in school and she helped me out A TON with my resume, for which I’m very grateful. We sort of ended up losing touch, but I’m still glad I signed up.
Isaac:
I have, but not SAA’s. I did an ALA one and also a writing one through Science Fiction Writers of America (I keep stressing this to remind people that your skills and interests from other fields carry over and help).
Laura:
Cool! I’ve found mentors through formal programs and through school/work. I’ve had a great experience with the SAA Mentor program. I think it’s really great that SAA is trying to provide support to new graduates and students in that way.
Isaac:
Both were useful. One developed into a friendship, the other was helpful but did not, largely because our professional interests and life paths diverged and we were not local to each other. (She was about to retire; I went for archives instead of libraries.)
It’s not too soon for a lot of the more experienced SNAPpers to become mentors. If you have been in the field for a few years, you know so much more than you think you do.
Gayle:
Yes, I love being a resource for current students!
Laura:
Good point! And it seems like a great way to help others. (I know I’ve really benefited from having mentors, friends, and people to talk to).
So in general, building a professional community can come from almost anywhere. Work, school, co-workers, supervisors, etc. Conferences seem like a good way to build relationships. And mentorship programs can allow you to learn a lot from another professional or allow you to help someone else navigate life as a student or new professional.
In what other ways can you give back to your community?
Gayle:
I like to stay professionally active so this year I signed up for SGA’s (Society of Georgia Archivists) local arrangements committee which organizes our annual meeting in October. It’s definitely a pretty intense committee to be involved with (and will only become more so as we get closer to fall), but there are usually a wide range of committees in professional orgs that don’t require too much of your time monthly.
Isaac:
Seeing students and interns in the archives as someone we owe care and work to, not someone who’s here to help us. I will always appreciate my mentor for doing that for me.
Gayle:
I also follow several people on Twitter who like to blog about the profession, which I think is another great way to contribute to the community.
Laura:
That’s a good point, blogs can be especially helpful for students. Do you ever try to reach out to people in the profession who do specific kinds of work or work at a place you’re interested in through social media or blog posts? I’m thinking of informational interviews or informal conversations online (Twitter, Facebook, etc).
Gayle:
Personally I’ve never reached out to anyone I wasn’t working on a committee with or didn’t meet previously, but I know a few people who have cold-emailed people to find out more about their job, workplace, or to schedule an informational interview. I think most folks did it while we were in school
Isaac:
I’d rather see networking as making friends who might be involved in my professional life later, instead of aiming to befriend specific people who I know can concretely help me now. The latter makes me feel mercenary, and then, like I said, if I feel bad about what I’m doing, I won’t represent well or make a friend at all. I don’t think that’s even inherently mercenary, but it’s enough to make me anxious.
Laura:
That really speaks to how different people handle the whole process of being a student/new professional and learning about the field. I’ve heard informational interviews can be a great resource, but it also makes sense that it might be uncomfortable for folks too. Everyone has to find the best steps for themselves.
As we’re finishing up, I want to ask: do you have any last advice you want to add for any students or professionals reading?
Isaac:
Mine is to remember that archivists are just people, and you’re as smart as them and they’re as nerdy as you. I was very intimidated when I started attending archives events, and then I realized I was looking at 50 mirrors.
Gayle:
I’d reiterate to definitely show up and put yourself out there, but don’t sign up for committees, etc. just to do it. Make sure you find something that sparks your interest and that you’ll be able to sustain that interest in over a year or two (which is how long assignments usually last). It’s always disappointing when someone is a no-show to meetings constantly.
Laura:
Thank you both for your time! I hope some readers find this advice useful!
. . .
Tldr:
Tips for Building Your Professional Community:
- Attend local and national professional events! Put yourself out there
- Find working groups or sections of SAA that interest you and get involved
- Think of building a professional community or networking like making new friends — you might have many shared interests! And it may be less intimidating to think of it that way.
- Try to find mentors at work, at school, or through a formal mentorship program! SAA has one as do other regional conferences.
- If you’re interested in the type of work someone does or the type of archives they work at, consider informational interviews if you’re comfortable!
- Stay connected to others in the field and to topics you find interesting by following others through blogs, Twitter, or other social media platforms
- Growing your professional community is a process, it takes time!
Thank you for reading! We hope this round table and these tips might be useful to you!
