Maureen Carroll …In Six

My interview with success story Maureen

Naomi: How did you find your current job?
Maureen: I found my current job through Indeed.com, which is a site that has served me well for both my first job in a private corporation to my current job in a public school.

Naomi: Favorite library you have been to?
Maureen: I lived in Baltimore City for a brief period of time and enjoyed a visit to the George Peabody Library in the culturally awesome Mt. Vernon section. The collection there is largely from the 18th and 19th Centuries and is so rich in history involving the arts, literature, and classics. One library I would love to visit someday is the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt…mostly because the architecture alone is breathtaking!

Naomi: Favorite book?
Maureen: My favorite book is always and forever going to be To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee. However, in a young adult literature course I was introduced to Skellig by David Almond, which for me has become almost as well loved. Both timeless stories encourage us to embrace differences, act thoughtfully, and love unconditionally.

Naomi: Favorite thing about libraries/ library technology?
Maureen: My favorite thing about libraries (and often the technology) is their ability to connect to almost any industry. Whenever I am with friends that work in different industries, I am never at a loss to think of the ways libraries can become involved. For example, 21st Century libraries are involved in programs on geocaching one day and an art exhibit or robotics contest the next.

Naomi: Any websites or feeds or blogs we should be following?
Maureen: For my fellow school and youth librarians, one blog that I have enjoyed since starting library school has been herlifewithbooks. While I have never met the author, Jessica, she was a virtual confidant to me as she chronicled her own journey through library school the same time I was embarking on mine. To new students, her blog archives would be worth a browse, but I think her real draw is the fact that she reads a TON and stays current on YA and Children’s books, interjecting short reviews, read-a-likes, and recaps. When there are a lot of books and interests to keep up with and very little time to do so, Jessica’s blog and musings do an excellent job of bringing you up to speed.

Naomi: Best piece of job hunting advice?
Maureen: Fake it until you make it! That might go for many an industry but I’ve found it to work well for libraries because they are welcoming communities. This means become involved in any professional organization, committee, event, social network, party and shindig you can, as early as you can, as a student or a new graduate! When you are involved and act confidently – most people won’t even realize you aren’t a working librarian, yet ¬ – but you will make valuable connections and keep current with emerging trends. Basically, you learn to speak the language of libraries, which will help you craft cover letters, interview, and eventually perform.

New Jersey born, bred, and educated, Maureen knows her way around thin-crust pizza, 89.5 WSOU, and the grease trucks. Her love of gastronomical adventures is only rivaled by her desire to help others. This led to obtaining a Criminal Justice degree from Seton Hall University. From there, she worked as a fraud investigator for four years.

Maureen then decided to aim her career towards serving others in an informational capacity, which led to her obtaining an MLIS at Rutgers SC&I. While in the Rutgers program, Maureen chose to refine her informational interests further and decided to focus on school libraries and 21st C. learning.

Maureen is immensely enjoying being a middle school librarian in a public school. When not at work, she continues her quest for New Jersey’s best pizza, longs for the days when women rolled their hair, and volunteers regularly for Camp Fatima of NJ.

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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