Serious Reading

In a few weeks I'll be giving a workshop at the Connecticut State Library (Middletown Service Center) on Public Speaking for Librarians.

One may think that Catalogers (who famously sit in a back room and do not interact with The Public) don't need to spend time developing such a skill. In my opinion, ALL librarians - in fact, ALL people - need good public speaking skills. It's a requirement for a professional image and librarians always need a boost in that area.

Public Speaking has been a vital part of my career and I want to encourage any librarian (or anyone else) to become more comfortable giving presentations to groups of people.

Here's what good Public Speaking skills can do for you:
1. Develop self-confidence
2. Project a professional image
3. Help communicate more clearly
4. Build a reputation
5. Show you care about an issue

The books I've been reading (and re-reading) in preparation are

Public Speaking for Success by Dale Carnegie. This is a classic and one I always recommend. Fortunately it's been revised (the previous title was Public Speaking: a Practical Course for Business Men).

The Elements of Speechwriting and Public Speaking by Jeff Scott Cook. I really like the way this book is structured. It spends a lot of time talking about preparation before moving on to presentation and I've structured my workshop similarly.

TED Talks: the Official TED Guide to Public Speaking by Chris Anderson. This is a new book for me and I have mixed feelings about it. It began rather slowly and I considered not continuing with it. Nevertheless, I persisted and it did get better, more interesting and I found some useful information that was not included in the other books. Then, it began to bog down; I thought there were too many examples and not much difference among them. Again, I considered not continuing with it. But the last couple of chapters were the best and were really worth reading.

Recommended in the book is a talk by Julian Treasure called "How to Speak so That People Want to Listen". It is really worth viewing and I'm considering showing it to the workshop participants.

While the average librarian my not ever make it to a TED conference, anyone can attend a Toastmasters meeting. I was a member for several years and Toastmasters definitely helped me improve my Public Speaking skills even though I was pretty well experienced by then. I think the best thing about Toastmasters (like TED) is that there are people with lots of different backgrounds, not just librarians.

The "Public Speaking" I usually do involves presentations of technical information to catalogers. Toastmasters provided me with an opportunity to broaden my skills by giving speeches on a variety of topics and in a variety of styles.

I began attending meetings when I was "between jobs" hoping to make contacts and perhaps launch a somewhat different career. That didn't quite happen, but it did give me another workshop to add to my repertoire.