Last month, I gave my first lightning talk at a library conference, the Iowa Library Association Annual Conference (ILA). I’ve wanted to present at a conference since I started graduate school, so this was an exciting milestone. My lightning talk was about conducting an e-journal overlap analysis, and it went smoothly—but that’s not what I want to talk about today.
As I reconnected with old friends, jostled to get morning coffee before it ran out, and relaxed on the sunny patio between sessions, I found myself reflecting on how different I felt compared to when I first attended ILA last year. This year, even though I was a little nervous about presenting for the first time, I felt comfortable and confident navigating the conference and talking to other librarians. But when I first started out as a library professional, working part-time and getting my MLIS, conferences scared me. I knew they were valuable opportunities, but I felt lost and overwhelmed trying to navigate them.
Here are the four things I wish I could go back and tell myself before my first library conference.
Pace yourself.
This might have been the hardest lesson for me to learn. I’m a little notorious among friends and family for my Scrooge McDuck disposition. At first, I refused to skip a single session of any conference I attended; I figured that I had already paid for the entire conference, so if I didn’t attend the entire conference, I was flushing my money down the drain. I’m sure you can imagine the mental burnout and physical exhaustion that followed.
Some level of tiredness after a conference is inevitable, but once I discovered I could skip a Wednesday dessert reception without the sky falling down, I began to recover faster and feel less stressed about conferences. I slowly shifted my goals from “attend the conference” to things that were more measurable, like “talk to five new people” or “learn about open access.” I finished conferences feeling more successful because I was able to identify which specific sessions and opportunities were in line with my career goals.
Plan your pitch.
As an introvert, I was incredibly anxious about attending conferences. I found it helpful to plan my “pitch” ahead of time, rehearsing it over and over again on the drive to the venue.
My “pitch” is what I’d say whenever I needed to introduce myself to someone new. I soon figured out that an effective pitch didn’t just describe my present; it gave a sense of my future goals as well. I would lengthen or shorten my pitch depending on the situation, but the full version went something like this: I’m a first-year MLIS student at the University of Iowa, and I work in technical services at Iowa’s law library. This is my first conference! I’m here to meet librarians and explore careers in [conference demographic: academic librarianship/libraries in Iowa/liaison librarianship/etc]. Once I was job-searching, I said so explicitly.
I also planned the questions I wanted to ask the librarians I met at the conference. I wrote them down in a notebook and reviewed them in the hallways between sessions to make sure I wouldn’t blank. (Bringing a notebook and pen everywhere also gave me something to do with my hands.) Some examples of the questions I asked:
- What are your duties in your current role?
- What skills and experiences prepared you for your current role?
- What are the biggest joys and challenges of your current role?
- What’s it like working at [type of institution—community college, liberal arts college, R1, etc]?
- What advice would you give to someone just starting out in the field?
Targeted networking is key.
Even though there are usually student discounts and scholarship opportunities, conferences still cost money. It’s important to spend that money as wisely as possible. For example, I always knew I wanted to be an academic librarian, and I hoped to be able to stay in Iowa after I graduated. That meant I needed to target my networking to academic librarians in the state of Iowa. Through trial and error, I discovered that the best conference for me was Iowa ACRL.
Every conference has its trade-offs, and there isn’t one “best conference” for every librarian or library student. For example, the national ACRL conference would have been more valuable to me if I intended to leave Iowa and I wanted to network with other academic librarians across the country. If I were also exploring public librarianship, ILA would have been the most useful, since it attracts both public and academic librarians.
The bottom line: Think about what you want out of your career, and ask your mentors how you can target your networking to achieve those aims.
You deserve to be here.
Seriously. Nobody is going to kick you out because you’re a student. When I started going to conferences, I was worried I didn’t have sufficient “credentials” to be there. But conferences are all about learning and networking. Being a student IS your credential!
Maybe this is the Iowan in me, but I was also worried about being a “bother” or a “nuisance” to others. I would avoid talking to people because I didn’t want to disrupt their meal or interrupt them texting a friend. However, for better or worse, meeting new people is the point of conferences. Don’t be afraid to say “Excuse me, is this seat taken?” and sit down next to someone new. You never know where it might lead.
Here’s an example from my own experience. When I was a first-year MLIS student, I attended my very first conference: Iowa ACRL 2024. I forced myself to sign up for the Thursday evening dine-arounds, and, not recognizing the names of anyone who had already signed up, I just picked the restaurant with the most vegetarian options. But when I got there, I slowly realized I’d ended up at a table populated almost entirely by senior leadership at Iowa State University Libraries, University of Northern Iowa Libraries, and the Iowa Library Association.
My first thought was “Oh my God, I’ve totally messed up. I should not be here. I don’t have anything worth these people’s time to contribute.” But (in true Iowa fashion), I felt even more strongly that it would be too rude to leave, so I forced myself to talk to the librarians at the table. I pulled my pitch out of my back pocket when they asked me about myself, and I made conversation by asking questions about their careers, working at Iowa State and UNI, and the challenges and joys in their work.
The librarian I sat across from a year and a half ago is my supervisor today. You never know the kinds of connections that can take root at a conference. Pace yourself, come prepared, be intentional, and, above all, remember that you deserve to be here.