Interviews, Success Stories

Christopher Schmit …In Six

INALJ success story Christopher!


Naomi: How did you find your current job?
Christopher: I actually found it by looking through the daily INALJ email. I have a bunch of RSS feeds set up with a variety of organizations and joblists, but this one wasn’t posted on one of those feeds, and I was glad to see it on the INALJ list.

Naomi: Favorite library you have been to?
Christopher: When I lived in London, I often went to the Fulham library. It was in a really great looking old building. It is somewhat the stereotypical picture I have when I imagine a library.

Naomi: Favorite book?
Christopher: Geek Love by Katherine Dunn.

Naomi: Favorite thing about libraries/ library technology?
Christopher: I always like learning new things and being a part of a quest for information, whether it is my quest or a patron’s quest. I think that’s what attracted me to the field of librarianship, and why I love playing trivia.

Naomi: Any websites or feeds or blogs we should be following?
Christopher: I really enjoy Letters to a Young Librarian I also like to keep up with soccer news (with a bit of humor), so I love reading Men in Blazers and listening to their podcast. Oh, and one last one, everyone should listen to The Bugle which is co-hosted by John Oliver (from the Daily Show with Jon Stewart)

Naomi: Best piece of job hunting advice?
Christopher: Start as early as you can. Especially if you are looking in an area where you don’t currently live. It’s always useful to see the trend for the job market and to become familiar with what positions are available. Also, always look for some type of networking opportunity, even if it is just running into someone familiar at the shop, you never know who might have the scoop on a position somewhere.

Christopher Schmit earned his MLIS from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in December 2011. Before pursuing a degree in Library Science, he had been working as a temp for nearly four years. His previous education includes an MA in International Relations & Diplomacy from Schiller International University, and a BA in German and International Relations from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has live abroad twice, once for a year in London, UK from 2006-2007, while working on his MA, and the other in Freiburg, Germany from 2003-2004. He is currently an Online Reference Librarian for the Career Education Corporation. In his free time, Christopher enjoys home-brewing beer, and exploring the Chicago area with his wife, Abbie.

Photo used with permission

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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