Developing Short and Long Term Goals
As you are considering what you want to accomplish in various areas of your career, it is also important to consider the timing of your goals. Research can offer meaningful leadership experience and opportunities for professional growth. For example, if you are interested in becoming a supervisor, you may gain experience leading a research team. Alternatively, you might make connections through your research that lead to joining an editorial board at a prestigious journal. Research can be helpful in the endeavor of pursuing a leadership position, but you will also want to be intentional when choosing large research projects and seeking career opportunities, as your perspective, capacity, and interests will change over time in the profession.
You can only plan ahead so far, as your goals and research plans are very likely to change over time but identifying major goals can help guide you in decision making. Many in LIS An interdisciplinary field that examines how physical and digital information is organized, accessed, collected, managed, disseminated and used, particularly in library settings. tenure systems find it helpful to organize professional goals into three different categories: job, research, and service.
Job: This category includes goals related to your core duties as a librarian. For example, if you are a teaching librarian, your goals may include items such as integrating information literacy into a course or developing online learning materials.
Research: This area focuses on goals related to the research that you are conducting. For example, you may have a goal to present at a conference or publish a peer-reviewed paper.
Service: This group is comprised of goals related to service you are involved in at your library, your institution, or within the field more broadly. For example, you may have a goal to serve on a national committee or chair a search committee.
When you are brainstorming goals, consider how your current and past work can inform potential future projects. Whether your current position allows personal research time or offers supporting research resources, you will want to balance your work and personal research time accordingly. To maintain a healthy working environment for your research, you should account for deadlines, time needed to fulfill other work responsibilities, and meeting your own personal needs. Remember, every step toward your research counts, even if that only includes fifteen minutes of free writing every day.
Activity
Complete the following activity in your LPOL Workbook. This activity will help you work toward a final curriculum deliverable, and it will help you develop your overall research plan.
Fill out the 1.2.3: Goal Brainstorming worksheets in your LPOL Workbook. In Part One, you will brainstorm what you would like to accomplish in your work within the three categories listed above. In Part Two, you will place your goals within a five-year timeline to start prioritizing which ones are most important and to avoid overcommitting to too many projects.
Consider what makes most sense with the time you have available, what best supports your researcher identity statement from Lesson 1, and what will contribute most beneficially to your job expectations or tenure requirements. From there, identify what relationships you currently have, what supports you still need, and what steps you will need to take to maintain and develop those relationships. Think of this activity like a map that will guide you to where you want to be and help determine how to get there. Balance is important to avoiding burnout, so be sure to take breaks along the way!
Developing Short and Long Term Goals
As you are considering what you want to accomplish in various areas of your career, it is also important to consider the timing of your goals. Research can offer meaningful leadership experience and opportunities for professional growth. For example, if you are interested in becoming a supervisor, you may gain experience leading a research team. Alternatively, you might make connections through your research that lead to joining an editorial board at a prestigious journal. Research can be helpful in the endeavor of pursuing a leadership position, but you will also want to be intentional when choosing large research projects and seeking career opportunities, as your perspective, capacity, and interests will change over time in the profession.
You can only plan ahead so far, as your goals and research plans are very likely to change over time but identifying major goals can help guide you in decision making. Many in LISLibrary and Information Science An interdisciplinary field that examines how physical and digital information is organized, accessed, collected, managed, disseminated and used, particularly in library settings. tenure systems find it helpful to organize professional goals into three different categories: job, research, and service.
Job: This category includes goals related to your core duties as a librarian. For example, if you are a teaching librarian, your goals may include items such as integrating information literacy into a course or developing online learning materials.
Research: This area focuses on goals related to the research that you are conducting. For example, you may have a goal to present at a conference or publish a peer-reviewed paper.
Service: This group is comprised of goals related to service you are involved in at your library, your institution, or within the field more broadly. For example, you may have a goal to serve on a national committee or chair a search committee.
When you are brainstorming goals, consider how your current and past work can inform potential future projects. Whether your current position allows personal research time or offers supporting research resources, you will want to balance your work and personal research time accordingly. To maintain a healthy working environment for your research, you should account for deadlines, time needed to fulfill other work responsibilities, and meeting your own personal needs. Remember, every step toward your research counts, even if that only includes fifteen minutes of free writing every day.
Activity
Complete the following activity in your LPOL Workbook. This activity will help you work toward a final curriculum deliverable, and it will help you develop your overall research plan.
Fill out the 1.2.3: Goal Brainstorming worksheets in your LPOL Workbook. In Part One, you will brainstorm what you would like to accomplish in your work within the three categories listed above. In Part Two, you will place your goals within a five-year timeline to start prioritizing which ones are most important and to avoid overcommitting to too many projects.
Consider what makes most sense with the time you have available, what best supports your researcher identity statement from Lesson 1, and what will contribute most beneficially to your job expectations or tenure requirements. From there, identify what relationships you currently have, what supports you still need, and what steps you will need to take to maintain and develop those relationships. Think of this activity like a map that will guide you to where you want to be and help determine how to get there. Balance is important to avoiding burnout, so be sure to take breaks along the way!