When I first starting looking into influencers, I had trouble because there are so many things that I am interested in that will hopefully culminate into the career path I intend for myself. There wasn’t anything I could boil down to encompass all that I look for when I consider those to “follow” on social media for their professional presence, so, in this same strain, I didn’t do that here either. Interested in running a very specific type of institution, I considered a specialist in that subject matter, a director of a small institution, and people that are interested in community and outreach, especially when it comes to the point of underrepresented members of society. I found it heartwarming, in a way, that when I finally identified five people that fell into these categories in one way or another, they were all women.
The influencer most removed from the library
profession would be Dr. Kat Williams. She is the president of the International Women’s Baseball Center, an American Sports Historian who focuses on women’s baseball, and an avid activist when it comes to promoting the place women hold in sport’s past, present, and future. She operates under the alias “TellHerSheCan” for her professional work and runs an active Facebook community page. Recently, to increase access, she started posting on Twitter through this handle, separating it from her personal accounts.
The most interesting aspect of the information profession is the special place it holds for community programming and outreach. In my search, I discovered several identified “Movers and Shakers” of 2018 that focused on these aspects, along with a researcher from the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC). April Hatchcock is a lawyer-turned-librarian whose dedication to librarian values, like diversity, accessibility, and inclusion has led her to blog extensively about intersectionality and inclusion while running an active Twitter. Another community builder in this year’s Movers and Shakers class, Jennifer Ferretti, has taken this a step further by cultivating the “We Here” community to provide connections to underrepresented members in the library community. Her Twitter and Instagram echo this call for inclusion, as does her publicly accessible personal website. The OCLC researcher Merrilee Proffitt posts regularly on the “Hanging Together” blog run by the OCLC as well as her Twitter, discussing unique approaches that librarians can take to reach their patrons and break down barriers.
Finally, wanting to direct an institution myself, Allie Stevens, another 2018 Mover and Shaker, provides a helpful professional presence to learn from. Her Twitter discusses the strides she’s been able to make in her library while her Facebook community page, “Tiny Library Think Tank,” has begun to connect librarians that have minimal resources to crowdsource ideas and give and take advice.
Each of these five people attributes something else to my wanted career goals. Advocacy for a place at the table and accessibility to materials by community members that don’t always have a say is crucial in the strides to put and keep the International Women’s Baseball Center on the map. The strides that Dr. Williams makes specifically in that area and women like Hatchcock and Ferretti make for other underrepresented community members can help guide how to best approach these issues in different circumstances. The dedication of people like Stevens allows for smaller institutions to make their mark as well. Finally, the ever-evolving relationship that the information profession has with online culture is also crucial for the development of new institutions, making the efforts of researchers at the OCLC worth keeping an eye on.
Raven K 
I follow April Hancock too! I’ve found she’s more willing than many others to bring up “controversial” subject matte, so following her Twitter and her blog has helped me hear some new discussions. She brings ideas up quite vocally, which I like.
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Thanks for all the links! I feel like a miser now for including exactly 0 links in my own post, but I definitely benefited from following yours. I was peripherally aware of We Here but hadn’t spent any time checking out its Twitter feed. I liked the range of recent posts: honoring pioneering POC librarians and circulating incisive journalism on systemic inequality. I also found their approach of using both “open” and “closed” channels on various social media platforms to facilitate different kinds of conversations and awareness.
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I hadn’t originally considered using the links, but thought that it would be a good idea because as I read about these women it was helpful to see the projects that they were talking about. Glad you liked them!
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Like you and Zoe, I also follow April H. (as I think of her) on twitter. She does such a great job of tweeting a mix of original content (both personal and her own thoughts on professional topics) and retweets, signal-boosting less well-known thinkers. She had a great post that related to our discussions of 10-second wait time recently: https://twitter.com/AprilHathcock/status/978735198966878208 I think the way she uses her platform to advocate for other WOC in the library world and beyond is so commendable.
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It’s great that you have a nice list of social media influences that can attribute to your specific career goals. I’ve had trouble with this, perhaps because I am still unsure of my career goals and my low presence on social media. I hope to find people that are working on social computing systems that benefit education, but much of the work is done in academia, which doesn’t post too much on social media. I decided to include people I have worked with in the past, even if their careers or work doesn’t directly align with mine. I’ve found that right now in following people I have worked with. Although they may not influence a lot of people in my field, they are close to me and influence me more than people I haven’t worked with yet.
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I’ve always found your motivation for pursuing the MSI degree really interesting, and I think that you do a really good job of communicating your academic and career interests through your discussion of the social media influencers you highlight here. The Tiny Library Think Tank group you shared looks especially interesting – I know that smaller, rural libraries often have a harder time doing all the things they would like due to budget constraints and lack of strength in (employee) numbers, so it’s great to see that there’s now a place where librarians who work in those settings have a place where they can connect and collaborate!
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Thanks Lena! I actually started following the Tiny Library Think Tank and it’s so cool to watch that collaboration play out among librarians. I even have gotten to way in a few times. After sharing it with a colleague, he invited me to another Library Think Tank of ALAers, and it’s been cool to see those conversations as well!!
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