Kristen Kennedy …In Six

My interview with success story Kristen


Naomi: How did you find your current job?
Kristen: I interned at the ACLU in my last semester of library school and really enjoyed it, but they had no plans to hire more staff in the near future. Then a few months after I graduated, a posting came up for an ACLU Assistant Archivist, but I thought there were so many people ahead of me in line for the job it wasn’t worth applying. But then my former supervisor encouraged me to apply, so I did, and three weeks later they offered me the position! I think the lesson here is that you should apply for everything, ever.

Naomi: Favorite library you have been to?
Kristen: J. P. Morgan’s! There are secret doors built into the bookshelves, and his collection is like mecca for book lovers. It would be great to break into that vault…not that I’d steal anything, just hang out with the illuminated manuscripts for awhile and be really content.

Naomi: Favorite book?
Kristen: Mating, by Norman Rush. It is this beautiful love story set in the Kalahari, but it’s also about socialism and glass-blowing and Latin. I have too much affection for this book to objectively describe it, but I recommend it to just about anyone. Also the Song of Ice and Fire series because, dragons!

Naomi: Favorite thing about libraries/ library technology?
Kristen: Digital libraries that facilitate the sharing of rare and wonderful objects you would never see up-close otherwise, like the Roman de la Rose project.

Naomi: Any websites or feeds or blogs we should be following?
Kristen: The Astronomy Picture of the Day! Why is the universe so awesome?

Naomi: Best piece of job hunting advice?
Kristen: Apply for everything, ever. Don’t give up! You’re great, it’ll happen.

Kristen Kennedy is from Amityville, New York and got her MLS from Queens College in 2011. Before landing a gig in the ACLU Archives, she worked at a small medical college on Long Island. She enjoys archery, bocce ball, and many other fair-weather activities.

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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