Stranger Things: When Early-Career Librarians Engage the Unknown and Roll for Perception

Short Session Description: A group of early-career librarians approach a dark cavern. It is off the well-traveled path and exudes a mysterious aura. With only hope as their strategy, they roll for Perception. But wait...do any of them have high Wisdom scores? Do they even know how to play this game? Were they ever taught??

Approaching new projects can be a daunting task for early-career librarians, especially when those projects are not typically reflective of your assigned Class (aka job role such as cataloger, instructor, data services librarian) or preferred area of interest. In this series of lightning talks, these new players will discuss how they tackled responsibilities and initiatives that were outside of their usual realms of expertise. Whether it was leading a software carpentry workshop without a firm grasp of teaching pedagogies or starting a collection evaluation despite having never taken a collection development class, early-career librarians will address how they overcame their initial shortcomings and advanced through their campaign regardless.

Session Format & Style: Series of Lightning Talks

Takeaways: Different attendees can expect different takeaways. For example:

• Early-career librarians...will learn strategies for building skills in short time-frames and will become familiar with resources that helped other new librarians develop expertise in an unfamiliar area.
• Supervisors and mentors...will learn best practices for how to support early-career librarians as they navigate uncharted territory in the beginning stages of their career. 
• Professors and instructors...will see what common gaps in library science education seem to proliferate most among early-career librarians and how those gaps are addressed in the workplace.

In addition, slides from the lightning talks will be shared with attendees either digitally or via a physical handout if the attendee prefers. 

Organization: I would like to collaborate with new librarians that I haven't met before. If selected, I plan to post a Call for Participation so that other early-career librarians from different institutions can join our party. 

Contact Information: Russel Peterson (rtpeterson1@ua.edu)