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Introduction 11 GETTING STARTED WITH THIS BOOK The book contains 9 chapters devoted to a different issue involving pro- fessional writing. Each chapter includes examples of the topics under dis- cussion, accompanied by questions for you to consider. These examples and questions are reproduced in The Workbook, which is found in the Appendix. You will want to keep a notebook for writing down comments and ideas. Maintaining a notebook not only helps organize your thoughts, it will also train you to be more observant. This is particularly important if you are an academic librarian or a LIS professor and need to develop a research agenda. But it also is just a good habit to get into. Too often dur- ing the course of the day we see or hear something that might be useful to the work we do and quickly forget about it. Writing these thoughts down may spark all sorts of ideas for projects in the future. In order to get the most out of this book, you’ll need the following: 1. A notebook to store your ideas. This can range from an old-fashioned notebook to an app for your smart phone. 2. A calendar or calendaring system to keep track of the due dates of all your writing projects. Products you might try are Google Calendar, Microsoft Outlook and Meekan, which works with Slack. 3. Folders (print or electronic) to store your documents. 4. Some kind of writing implement—a tablet, an iPad, pen and paper— whatever you prefer using. 5. Access to a citation program like Endnote, Zotero, Noodle tools and/ or a style manual. In the case of library and information studies, the citation style generally used is APA. The best way to learn is by doing, and it is recommended that you complete the exercises found at the end of the book in the Workbook. The Scan local, regional, national, and professional news sources for ideas Decide on a topic Look for additional background sources Decide on key points to discuss Create a rough outline of the blog Begin first draft