An RSS Brain Break

by Amanda May, Head Editor, INALJ North Dakota

An RSS Brain Break

1da1d70As an information professional, my RSS feed includes blogs on collection development, information literacy, library management, reference work, etc.  These topics are relevant and interesting to my profession, but there are only so many posts on metadata one can take, you know?

Anyway, here’s a list of a few of my favorite library blogs that I visit when I need a “brain break.”

  • Vintage Libraries – Do you miss the days of the card catalog?  Remember the “good old days” at the photoblog, Vintage Libraries.
  • Librarian Problems – This is a humorous blog that deals with issues that many library staff face on a daily basis.  It makes you feel like you are not alone.
  • Bookshelf Porn  – This is a photoblog that showcases bookshelf photos from around the world.
  • Awful Library Books – I found out about this site in my collection development class.  The blog posts items from library collections that are sometimes funny and often questionable.  It’s always interesting to read other librarian’s perspectives on the books.  This post is definitely one of my favorites.
  • Tattooed Librarians and Archivists – This is a photoblog that showcases the tattoos of various information professionals.
  • A Librarian’s Guide to Etiquette – According to the webpage, A Librarian’s Guide to Etiquette is “the number one, most-trusted source for authoritative tongue-in-cheek librarian etiquette tips on the Internet.”

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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