For Immediate Release
Contact: Rob Colding
Information Today, Inc.
(609) 654-6266, ext. 330
rcolding@infotoday.com

From Graduation to Retirement, This Book by the Authors of a Popular Library Career Site Helps Librarians Plan for, Navigate, and Cultivate Rewarding Careers

September 24, 2013, Medford, New Jersey—Information Today, Inc. (ITI) announced the publication, in print and ebook editions, of Career Q&A: A Librarian’s Real-Life, Practical Guide to Managing a Successful Career by Susanne Markgren and Tiffany Eatman Allen.

In the book, Markgren and Allen examine events, transitions, struggles, and advances that encompass and define a librarian’s career, answering a range of important questions library professionals face as they move through the various stages of their working lives. For more than 10 years, the authors have collaborated on the popular online advice column, “Career Q&A With the Library Career People.” The book blends their own best advice with tips and ideas from a number of their savvy peers.

“Librarianship can be an exciting and rewarding career choice because it offers variety, flexibility, and growth,” Markgren says. “We wrote the book to share practical advice, experience, and information that can help librarians manage a successful and satisfying career.”

“If I were to invent a perfect adjunct to the work I do, it would be a career management bible. It would be an advice column of sorts, offering the voice of the confident, kind, and helpful practitioner. It would be, in short, this book,” writes Loriene Roy, past president of ALA, in the foreword to the book. “[Career Q&A] will serve as a useful guide for the decisions you make now and throughout your career.”

“From searching for that first library job to getting ready for retirement, Career Q&A addresses the key LIS career issues you’re likely to face, and does so in Markgren and Allen’s signature style: realistic, honest, funny, and smart,” says Kim Dority, author of Rethinking Information Work and LIS Career Sourcebook. “I can’t wait to recommend this book to my students.”

Career Q&A presents the following 14 chapters:

1. The Beginning: Getting Started or Getting Going
2. Making a Good First Impression: The Art of the Cover Letter
3. Documenting Your Employment History: The Art of the Resume
4. Online Identities: Managing Your Online Presence and Building Your Brand
5. Interviewing: Getting Ready for the Show
6. Networking: Getting Involved in the Profession
7. From Here to There: Time for a Change
8. Putting Yourself Out There: Presenting and Writing
9. Job Flexibility: Possibility or Myth?
10. Alternative Jobs: The Nontraditional Career Path
11. Moving Up the Ladder: Stepping Into Management
12. Keeping Up: Following Technology and Trends
13. Collaboration: Forming Productive Partnerships
14. Retirement: Wrapping Up Your Career and Planning for the Next Stage

In addition, the book features the foreword by Roy, a list of recommended resources, and a comprehensive index. LibraryCareerPeople.com provides reader updates, a career Q&A forum, details of the authors’ upcoming workshops and appearances, and over 10 years’ worth of content from the Info Career Trends newsletter.

Susanne Markgren is the digital services librarian at Purchase College, State University of New York. Previously, she worked in public libraries, a theater library, a government library, a seminary library, a university library system, and a medical school library. Tiffany Eatman Allen is the director of Library Human Resources at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill. She has worked in libraries for more years than she’s willing to admit, including in the catalog department of an academic library, the library of a pharmaceutical company, and a private biomedical research foundation library.

Career Q&A: A Librarian’s Real-Life, Practical Guide to Managing a Successful Career (240 pp/softbound/$39.50/ISBN 978-1-57387-479-3) is published by Information Today, Inc. (ITI) and is available wherever professional books and ebooks are sold. For more information, contact the publisher by calling (800) 300-9868; faxing (609) 654-4309; emailing custserv@infotoday.com; or visiting the ITI website at infotoday.com.

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