I am also very excited to start implementing some of my own ideas.  I would like to make some video tutorials, and similar tools after I do some teaching and talk with people about how they should look.  Hopefully this would take some strain off the teaching librarians.  Moreover, I have a number of ideas to improve the website.  My overriding goal is to make the library and its services more user friendly.  Many library services are not even close to being intutive.  Users struggle through using our tools to find information.  We have to make the experience easier and more enjoyble, not a chore.  I hate seeing users getting frustrated and shutting down when they run into problems (such as no results in a database or catalog search…Google at least gives them something).  So, I am going to do what I can to allow users to have a pleasant successful research experience.

I decided that I should set some professional goals for myself and document them. Then I can look back at them and see if they are being accomplished. I recommended that others do this as well. They may shift and change but goals will give you a focus for your career.

As I move into my professional career I have three primary goals:

• Become an expert researcher
• Increase my skills in web and emerging technologies
• Be a leader in helping libraries to become more user-friendly

In order to achieve the first goal I plan to obtain a position where I can use and practice the research skills that I already have, but also learn and develop new skills. Through obtaining a position in which I can perform reference and research I will be able to gain knowledge of new resources or ways of searching.

The second goal will require me to be very self-motivated. In order to learn more about web technologies I will have to play around with them and be self-directed in my learning. Specifically, I would first like to learn Javascript and PHP. Reading books, and utilizing online tutorials will be the strategy that I will use to accomplish this. Also staying current on the latest 2.0 and library technologies is important to me. To do this I subscribe to numerous blogs and listservs.

Finally I see that there is much work to be done in libraries. Often libraries are much more difficult to use than their commercial and web counterparts. Therefore, in my career it will be my mission to try to begin to bridge this gap and become a leader in making libraries more user-friendly. To do this I will need to conduct research on users including things like focus groups, surveys, and usability testing. Then on the basis of this research, propose and carry out solutions to these problems.
These goals will guide me in whatever position that I obtain. They will be the framework upon which I will be able to hang specific accomplishments.