Work-at-Home Saturday — Where ARE you edition

Welcome back to Work-at-Home Saturday, a semi-regularly-scheduled program of posts on the ins and out of working from home. Today, I’m working, so things will be very, very quiet around here. You see, in my other life, I used to be a librarian — and the annual American Library Association conference is in Chicago this weekend! So, I snagged myself an exhibits-only pass (for free, of course) and am heading down to meet with some people, grab some swag, and do a talk this evening on “Career Building in a Down Economy.” I’m catching the 7:08AM (yawn!) train, and won’t get back home til late this evening.

Thinking about this made me realize I haven’t talked a lot here about what I actually do from home. One of my many hats: Workshop leader and presenter, mainly to library groups. I present on everything from careers to publishing to generational issues in the workplace, which helps keep me connected to my former profession and allows me to travel around the country (and sometimes Canada!) and see what librarians in different places are doing. It also forces me to keep up with the field and keeps my name out there, which should be a plus should I ever go back to full-time work in a library.

What else do I do? Well, I write: I’ve written 8 books for librarians, one for nonlibrarians, and am working on a new one. I publish regular columns (yes, again, for librarians — sensing a trend here? :)) This is one of the reasons this blog has been so much fun for me; I get to write a lot and get to share information (that librarian thing again) on topics I care a lot about.

But what else do I do? Well, I edit: I’m a consulting editor for a publisher that (OK, you guessed it) mainly puts out professional titles for librarians. So, I find people to write for ITI Books, and I edit their work — also a great way of keeping me connected to the library field.

But wait, there’s more? Well, I have this other website: LISjobs.com is a career portal for librarians and info pros. While this is mainly a labor of love, I do have the occasional advertiser and income from some parts of the site, particularly resume postings.

And, in my spare time… I sell stuff online… I blog here and at The Liminal Librarian… I have these two kids… until recently I published a couple of newsletters, but just scaled those back… I administer a message board for librarians… I’ve just started doing coupon classes… probably some other things that I’m forgetting to mention. 🙂

All this to say that I truly believe that one way to break out on your own is to branch out in several different directions. I’ve talked here before about this idea of multiple profit centers, or not being dependent on one stream of income. This is also good psychologically for those of us who are Renaissance people. I originally went into librarianship in part because I was interested in so many different things; it’s one of those fields where everything you ever learn comes in handy, and you never know what you might be researching or learning on any given day. I get that same reward now by branching out in various ways; there’s always something different to work on and explore. (Although, I could use an extra few hours in the day to explore it all more thoroughly! I could also use kids who don’t wake me up at 4AM on a day I’m heading downtown for 12+ hours, but you can’t win ’em all… 🙂 )

So, that’s my current story. Is this what I’ll be doing 5 years from now? Who knows, but I see it as a career I can definitely scale up as my kids get older and the younger one heads off to school, and I have short- and long-term goals in more than one area.