Out candidates for Vice President/President-Elect:
- Mandi Goodsett
- Dani Cook
Questions 1: Why are you interested in this position?
Mandi Goodsett: NMRT has been my home since I joined ALA in 2011, and I’m passionate about serving the group’s members and helping it thrive. Some of you may have had a
similar experience, but getting involved in ALA as a library school student was a very overwhelming prospect for me. Without NMRT, I wouldn’t have had the opportunities to network with other new librarians, gain leadership experience on the NMRT Executive
Board, or begin to understand the complicated structure of ALA. I would be honored to have the opportunity to give back to NMRT, considering everything its members have done for me. I’m also fully supportive of NMRT’s mission to help members find their path
to active involvement in ALA, wherever they fit best, and I would cherish the opportunity to determine the needs of NMRT members so we can work together to create an organization that reflects our shared interests.
Dani Cook: I’ve been involved in NMRT since I started library school five years ago. In NMRT, I’ve found a supportive entry point to the giant entity that is ALA. The support that I’ve received through NMRT’s services to new librarians (e.g., the mentorship program) and the experiences on NMRT committees have led to building substantial relationships and expanding my involvement within the profession. As Vice-President/President-Elect, I want to ensure that this support network for new librarians continues to thrive and expand. I’m particularly invested in seeing NMRT expand support for student chapters, such as reinvigorating the speakers’ bureau, as well as investigating how NMRT can help to retain new graduates in the profession, especially from diverse backgrounds.
Question 2: What skills and experiences do you bring to this position?
Mandi Goodsett: I have a wealth of leadership experience from my involvement with NMRT and other ALA divisions and roundtables. I have served on the NMRT ALA Student Reception, Footnotes, and Endnotes committees, as well as on the NMRT Executive Board as Secretary. I am currently serving as co-chair of the Library Instruction Roundtable (LIRT) Teaching, Learning, and Technology Committee, and I am a member of the ACRL Instruction Section Awards Committee, on which I served as Secretary last year. I’m also honored to be NMRT’s Emerging Leader this year. These committee appointments have given me valuable experience working on a team, meeting deadlines, and navigating the structure of ALA. I also have experience promoting the interests and needs of new librarians and LIS students from my time as an officer for the Atlanta Emerging Librarians group, and from my efforts to form and initiate a network of groups for new librarians in Ohio (see the following for more details: https://ohionmrt.wordpress.com/). The leadership experience I have, especially on the NMRT Executive Board, has given me organizational and time-management skills, as well as an appreciation for effective communication and collaborative teamwork.
Dani Cook: I have strong experience in managing virtual and dispersed teams, including chairing the NMRT President’s Program committee last year. Over the past four years, I’ve served on a number of NMRT committees, so have a strong sense of the mission of NMRT and how it operates. While in library school, I served as vice-president of our student chapter of ALA, so I feel very close to the mission of NMRT and have many ideas for the types of support that NMRT can offer to new and in-training librarians.
With a dispersed membership and committees, communication is critical to this position. My experiences with working with virtual teams, as well as my professional experience in writing everything from library search documentation to Chicago festival guides, will be very helpful in this position, as I understand the necessity of clear, transparent, and timely communication.
In my current professional position, I coordinate instruction and research services at an academic library. Success in this position requires organization, good negotiating skills, and the ability to keep many balls in the air at once. I’d bring these same skills to the NMRT Vice-Presidency.
Question 3: As Vice-President/President-Elect, one of your responsibilities will be preparing for your Presidential term the following year. How will you work with the current President to advance her/his initiatives while planning for your own presidency?
Mandi Goodsett: I’m very excited to work with Kate Kosturski as she oversees NMRT and pursues initiatives that are important to her. I love her proposed presidential theme
of “Opening Doors in ALA,” because I know first-hand how helpful NMRT can be for new librarians looking for ways to become involved. While I’m Vice-President, Kate’s agenda will be my top priority, and helping her reach her goals for NMRT will be a great learning
experience for me. While I gain perspective and experience helping Kate, I can also consider the organization’s needs in the coming year. It’ll be really important that I support Kate in her efforts, because it will help me understand what to prioritize in
my own presidency.
Dani Cook: It’s critical to establish continuity from year-to-year, so I would work closely with Kate to consider how my presidential theme and initiatives can build on the work that happens in 2016-17. By deeply involving myself in Kate’s initiatives, I will have the understanding necessary to choose a meaningful theme that acknowledges the work that has happened in NMRT over the past several years. During my year as Vice-President, I would want to establish a close working relationship with Kate, and be as sponge-like as possible, learning everything I can about the administration of NMRT, to ensure a successful presidential year.
Question 4: What do you hope to learn if elected?
Mandi Goodsett: Serving as NMRT Vice-President/President-Elect would be an incredibly rich learning experience. I hope to learn more about the needs of library school students and recent graduates so I can better serve their needs and collaborate with them. I also hope to learn more about the skills necessary to be a strong leader, so I can take these skills back to my workplace and continue to use them as a participant in ALA divisions and roundtables. Since becoming involved in NMRT, I have come to greatly respect its leaders, and if I could lead the organization with even a fraction of their kindness, strength, and success, I would consider that a very valuable lesson learned.
Dani Cook: If elected, I hope to learn about the ongoing concerns and interests of new professionals and how NMRT can address them. I’d specifically like to learn more about how student chapters of ALA operate on various campuses around the country (and Canada!), and how NMRT can continue and improve support for their work. I’m also interested in learning more about who is (and, importantly, isn’t) a part of NMRT, and how NMRT can do its part to bring in diverse perspectives to ALA.
Question 5: If elected, what time management skills will you employ to ensure that your NMRT duties remain a priority?
Mandi Goodsett: Fortunately, my experience as a very busy NMRT Secretary has greatly strengthened my time management skills. While serving in that position, I learned to set aside time each week to devote to NMRT responsibilities, and I developed efficient and careful planning methods so that I wouldn’t be overwhelmed when responsibilities piled up. If elected, I’m also ready to reduce my involvement in other professional development projects and committees to make sure that NMRT is my top priority.
Dani Cook: As I mentioned above, I’m used to keeping many balls in the air. That said, I would plan to scale back some of my other professional commitments if elected to this position, so that I can give NMRT the focus that it deserves. I will also work with my supervisor to set aside the majority of my professional development time for NMRT duties. In terms of time management skills, I’m a huge fan of to-do lists—usually old school, Post-It note style. But if elected to this position, I will use a digital tool like Wunderlist to create shared lists of my tasks, which I would anticipate sharing with the NMRT board for the sake of transparency and accountability.