This book has given you the tools to thrive in your first professional role: to manage projects, money, users and your own development. You should have a clear view of how to move forward in the profession, and to make sure that you, your users and your professional peers get the most out of what you do.

You should understand how to think about project management, and how to make sure that you are using the most suitable tools for the job.

You should be more confident in measuring and communicating success – in all forms of communication. While communicating well is very important, don't worry if you are scared of it. Practice helps to build confidence, and peers will support you, and provide useful feedback. Remember that all forms of communication feed off each other, and learning to communicate with peers in writing can help you to have more confidence when communicating verbally with users.

Place the needs of the user at the centre of your role. This is easiest to do if you align yourself with them – understand their values, use their vocabulary. Knowing what they really want will help prove your value, too.

Remember that marketing is a vital part of providing a good service, and strongly connected with meeting your users’ needs. It can take some special effort, but can also be part of your everyday activities. Just being the most professional person you can in all your interactions is great marketing. You could take this to its furthest extent, and become ‘embedded’. Think about the extent to which place defines your role.

Meeting users’ needs is likely to involve working with technology. The advent of technology hasn't changed what the fundamentals of our job are, just how we do it. The more you know about technology, the more you can get involved in using it to deliver cool and innovative services.

You don't have to learn to code – though it's great if you want to! There are applications and services you can use, without having to understand all of the technology behind them. You should know enough to support your users, and to collaborate with IT specialists and coders. You also need to understand the fundamentals of digital preservation, for future information curation and retrieval.