Articles, Interviews

Welcome to INALJ, Sana Khan

by Naomi House, MLIS

Welcome to INALJ, Sana Khan

*update 1/3/2021 My husband, Sana, is taking over the lead adding jobs to INALJ. I will remain the main article/interview editor and assist him. Once I find full time employment I will move into an advisory role and he will be the lead. Excited for 2021 and being able to continue INALJ (I need a Library job) with his help!

originally published 5/22/2020

For the past year my husband, Sana Khan, has been learning the day to day aspects of INALJ’s job ads and I am long overdue in adding him to the site and acknowledging his learning and labor. Many of you are already familiar with him from my articles and interviews with him but if not, I would like to share a little bit about him and why we have moved in this direction.

Sana was born in what is now the KPK province of Pakistan in a traditional, large family. It was a childhood spent playing cricket and hiding from the barber (his Dad thought his hair was too long). But it was also a childhood steeped in oral traditions. He attended school and earned his B.S.C. in Science, but dreamed of moving abroad and seeing the world. When he got the opportunity, which is rare these days and for which he is eternally grateful, he jumped on the chance. Since then he has built a small moving labor business and spent years renovating houses from Hyattsville, MD to New Orleans to Western New York state where we reside part of the year. We also live part time in Budapest, Hungary which has allowed us to travel cheaply to many countries and to be mid-way between his family in Pakistan and mine in America.

We are transitioning him to take over the daily duties of INALJ over the next year so that I can seek employment and we can be a two income family once again. He loves hearing all the success stories of LIS / library workers finding jobs and hopes to continue this great work. While I am seeking out opportunities (I am looking for remote work or international work) he will continue learning the ropes and will eventually take over. I will stay involved with INALJ even if hired elsewhere, but the day to day labor with be Sana. Please belatedly welcome him aboard and we look forward to making our partnership help job seekers.

 

Naomi House

Naomi House, MLIS, is the founder and publisher of the popular webzine and jobs list INALJ.com (formerly I Need a Library Job) and former CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) of T160K.org, a crowdfunding platform focused on African patrimony, heritage and cultural projects. INALJ was founded in October 2010 with the assistance of her fellow Rutgers classmate, Elizabeth Leonard. Its social media presence has grown to include Facebook (retired in 2016), Twitter and a LinkedIn group, in addition to the interviews, articles and jobs found on INALJ. INALJ has had over 21 Million page hits and helped many, many thousands of librarians find employment! Through grassroots marketing, word of mouth and a real focus on exploring unconventional resources for job leads, INALJ grew from a subscription base of 20 friends to a website with over 500,000 visits in one month. Naomi believes that well-sourced quantity is quality in this narrow job market and INALJ reflects this with many new jobs published daily. She has also written for the 2011, 2012 and 2013 LexisNexis Government Info Pro and many other publications in the past decade. She presents whenever she can, including serving on three panels at the American Library Association's Annual Conference in Las Vegas; as breakout presenter at OCLC EMEA in Cape Town, South Africa; as a keynote speaker at the Virginia Library Association annual meeting; at the National Press Club in Washington DC; McGill University in Montreal, Canada; the University of the Emirates, Dubai, MLIS program and the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Naomi was a Reference, Marketing and Acquisitions Librarian for a contractor at a federal library outside Washington, DC, and has been living and working in Budapest, Hungary and Western New York State. She spent years running her husband’s moving labor website, fixed and sold old houses and assisted her husband cooking delicious Pakistani food. She is preparing to re-enter the workforce and is job hunting. Her husband is now the co-editor of INALJ, a true support!  She has heard of spare time but hasn’t encountered it lately. She pronounces INALJ as eye-na-elle-jay. 

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