Las mujeres y la pobreza

Librarianship, from my personal experience, is a very active profession. Participants were very connected to the professional community; they communicated with colleagues from other states and other countries. However, it is worth noting that they were recruited through listserv mailings to the professional community, so this may be an artifact of the recruitment technique unique to this sample. Professional networks are probably more than typically important to the core interviewees, because they were individuals who were listserv readers and willing to engage with this project.

Modes by which interviewees interact with the professional community include listservs (as discussed in 4.4.2), direct emailing of colleagues, print or web-based professional writing, and conferences. Conferences, in particular, were mentioned as places where participants make connections with peers from different contexts and backgrounds. They use these connections to form networks for gathering advice and ideas for professional practice. When they bring research into the discussion, they use these networks to support their research.

One way that participants used professional networking draws from the literature: some participants and most seniors who served as mentors advocated making contact with authors of key studies. This was advocated as a way to meet colleagues, improve research plans, and possibly find co-authors. This can be done via e-mail or through academic social networks. As one primary interviewee explained:

You know, if you have specific questions or comments about things, I would not hesitate to follow up with the author of an article… If you have questions about something, or if

there was something you really liked, or you wanted to know a little something more about how this came up in the research. Yeah, you should contact people. Yeah, you should make connections with colleagues. (C1)

When participants spoke of networking, though, they all also mentioned conferences. Conferences appear to be the place where participants expect to go to make new contacts, discuss presentations, and build their pools of professional contacts. One of the more experienced

primary interviewees said that the best advice is, “[N]etwork, network, network. It is really important, and be forward. I mean, if you go to a conference, go up and introduce yourself. Talk to people, you know. Make yourself visible and find knowledgeable people who are willing to help you” (B1).

Discussions about participants’ forming of professional networks for research intertwined with broader comments about forming professional networks generally. Several said that finding the right community to network appears to take time and work. Finding the right organization is hard, and a key part of the challenge of choosing a professional community was based on what kinds of contacts are there. Participants believed that they should seek an organization where the other members fit well with the participant’s own professional interests and collegial needs. One interviewee in a smaller specialty of librarianship explained:

Because my area is so specialized I do participate in the local organizations … and it’s because there are other librarians in the area who care about [my specialty]. I have dropped all of the sort of big library associations, I’m no longer a member of ALA, I’m no longer a member of SLA… ALA has been sort of a desert for me in terms of [my specialty, so] an organization that’s really focused on [my specialty] is where I focused my efforts. (A1)

Mentors sometimes helped in finding communities and conferences for networking. One mentoring strategy that arose was for mentors to use their own networking at conferences as a way to make connections for their mentees and colleagues. One fairly obvious strategy was

referring mentees to people that the mentor knew had similar interests. A less obvious way that participants’ mentors helped junior librarians was by sharing what they learned at the conference on return. After a conference, some of the sites held a discussion where attendees would share their own presentations, information from other presentations they had seen, names of colleagues that might be interesting to the library, and insights they had gained. These planned post-

conference discussions sometimes connected with having a regular research discussion group (as mentioned in 4.7.2.2 above). Making conference attendance part of the larger community-

building discussion in the library was a way for all librarians at those sites to get guidance on which conferences are best for which librarians, and how to make conferences more effective for networking.

Finally, conference costs came up in most of the primary and junior peer interviews. Paying for conference travel appears to be a very visible form of support that the library can give. As one participant said, “Not everybody gets to go to the conferences and not everybody has the money to present and you know. We’re very fortunate in that [our boss] does put aside money for us to be able to do those types of things” (C1). Another said, “Support from above for pursuing the research and going to conferences and learning more about what’s going on in your field is really helpful” (E1). Conferences were talked about as one of the most important sources of ideas for research and outlets for discussing research findings. The participants felt that conference attendance was a critical component of the research process, and support of conference travel was often presented as evidence that the library was supportive of research.