Enhance Your Professional Development through Association Membership
Jinfo Blog

By Andrew Clark

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Membership of a professional association can help to enhance your career and offer a raft of new learning opportunities, explains Andrew Clark.

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Whether you are a learned information professional who has been in the industry for many years or new into the profession, we have got to be able to deal with constant change and innovation. We need to keep evolving and be part of a high-impact learning culture, where learning positively impacts business results or makes a difference.

Any company that wishes to stay competitive needs to constantly change and adapt within its business environment and this means that employees need to be adapting and learning to deal with these changes. 

Any learning culture embeds professional development into the heart of the company and ensures that knowledge is shared between teams and individuals to improve practice. A learning culture encourages employees to ask questions, share successes and lessons learned, and to propagate and cross-fertilise ideas. 

Step Outside Your Comfort Zone

Time and budget constraints are frequently used as excuses for not participating in available learning programmes and sometimes there is self-fear that that you might be out of your comfort zone. Whilst the more traditional methods of learning are great let’s not overlook the value that learning and professional development through association membership can bring.

Aside from my day job I have the pleasure of being the current president of the Pharmaceutical Documentation Ring and member of the Special Libraries Association. Both activities require responsibility, an investment of time and energy and not least a willingness to learn. Being actively involved in both associations enables me to do just that and also be able to encourage peers in the industry to have the same opportunity.

Choose Your Association Carefully

Think carefully about what might be the right association for you and then take the bold decision to join. Not only will you benefit, but also your peers, your colleagues, your boss.

My article "Driving Professional Development through Associations" identifies key questions to ask when deciding which association to join, highlights the many benefits that can ensue and suggests next steps. 

Keeping your professional development continuous is critical and as professionals we need to ensure that we remain on top of our game. Belonging to an industry association is a great way to do just this - you will have no regrets!

This Blog Item is part of the FreePint Topic Series "Best Practices in Information Skills Development".

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