Dots & Loops

Extracurricular committees and professional networks: I’m taking it lying down

I’ve been a member of CILIP for quite a number of years now, since my graduate trainee days, and have always been lucky enough to have my membership fees paid by my employers. In some ways not having to make that decision about whether to join and whether it’s worth the money does lead to complacency about actively participating.

Is it enough to just be a member these days? Seems like if you’re not giving extra, not being exceptional, you might as well lie down with a duvet and let yourself get trampled by the hoards of new movers and shakers. It’s kind of cutthroat out there.

I’m not exactly fired up about the SIGs and committees on offer under the CILIP umbrella – I still haven’t found my niche I guess.

And what of other organisations? I can’t read music and will probably never work with music in libraries so it’s probably pointless to join IAML even if they did give me a prize once. SLA looks like it’s the big thing right now but I can’t figure out what makes it different from CILIP apart from offering all-expenses-paid trips to the annual conference in the US.

If noone has any suggestions then I suppose I’ll just ready myself for a good trampling. At least I’m lying down.