Seizing Opportunities to Serve: Professional Involvement, Local to National

Are you just getting started in librarianship?

Are you looking for ways to volunteer for your local, state, regional or national organizations?

Do you want to serve on a committee, act as a reviewer, or run for an office, and you don't know where or how to get started?

Well, you've taken your first step by joining ALA! Our panel of speakers will help you with the next steps, as they discuss their involvement in professional organizations, tips and techniques on how to be an effective volunteer, and why service work is valuable to you and librarianship at large!

Jade Alburo is the Librarian for Southeast Asia, Oceania, Anthropology, and Religion at UCLA. Before UCLA, she was a Reference Librarian in the Main Reading Room of the Library of Congress and a CIRLA Fellow at the Smithsonian Institution Libraries. She holds an MLS from the University of Maryland, College Park, an MA in Folklore from Memorial University of Newfoundland, and a BA in English and Religious Studies from the University of California, Berkeley. Jade is very active in ALA, ACRL, and APALA. She is an ALA Spectrum Scholar, an ARL Diversity Scholar, and an ALA Emerging Leader.

Nancy Faget currently works as a federal librarian in Washington DC. The most interesting paid position she held was in the Disney Marketing Support library at Epcot. Through volunteering with ALA FAFLRT and FLICC at the Library of Congress, she discovered new ways to contribute. Nancy works through Careers in Federal Libraries events, webinars, and the online google group to counsel those interested in expanding their career options. She is convinced that your great ideas are just waiting to be realized.

Rhonda Puntney has been the youth services and special needs consultant at Lakeshores Library System in Waterford, Wisconsin for the past eleven years. She is the current president of the Wisconsin Library Association, and the Division Councilor and board member for the Association to Library Service to Children (ALSC). In June 2011, she will become the president of the Collaborative Summer Library Program (CSLP). She has a Master's Degree in Library and Information Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Jenica P. Rogers is Director of Libraries at the State University of New York at Potsdam. Her current professional interests include trying to think strategically about the next five years in libraries, breaking the bad patterns of ostrich-style library management, and informing, mentoring, and supporting new library professionals as they hit the real world face first and at full speed. Jenica earned her MLIS from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2001, received a SUNY Potsdam President's Award for Excellence in Professional Service in 2009, and was one of Library Journal's Movers and Shakers of 2009. Visit her
blog.

NMRT Presidents Program Committee 2010-2011

Heather Acerro, Chair

Chanitra Bishop

Elizabeth Downey

Courtney Fuson