ALA FanGirl Moments

I wish I had attended ALA this year instead of only presenting one day.  You could feel the energy and excitement and I know I missed a ton of wonderful events and people.  But I was fortunate and had many ‘fangirl’ moments as well and I want to share some of them here (apologies for my dimly lit & blurry iPhone photos).

inalj head editors and guestINALJ Head Editors!!!  The ones that make it all possible and wrangle and coordinate so you can find your future job.  INALJ is a virtual volunteering team so I wasRachaelA thrilled to finally meet this group of us in person!  I was also able to present with Julie and Rachael later on that day.

front left to right: Sara Dixon of INALJ Kansas, Julie Watson of INALJ Pennsylvania, me (Naomi House), Holly Lipschultz of INALJ Illinois – – –  back left to right: Kate Kosturski INALJ NY state, Mary Woolsey (fan), Ruth Lincoln of INALJ DC and Fallon Bleich of INALJ Oklahoma   Also the final photo is of Rachael Altman, INALJ Alabama, and I at the presentation we were panelists on.   (better photo from Kate Kosturski!)

archivesgig2Meredith Lowe of the fab Archives Gig:
so excited Meredith was able to stop by the INALJ informal meetup.  She does it all at Archives Gig which is THE premier resource for all archives jobs : )  She also staffed the University of Wisconsin – Madison SLIS booth. (phone via iPhone)

 

stephenxflynnStephen X. Flynn of Open Cover Letters:
So happy I got to meet Stephen at the Movers & Shakers lunch!  We are all HUGE fans of his at INALJ and have covered his fab site in many of our blog postings.  Check out this interview INALJ did with Stephen.

 

Raymond Pun of NYPL: So thrilled to meet him in person.  The work he does at NYPL is phenomenal but I also have to add that he has one of my favorite INALJ interview photos ever.  Thanks for hanging with me and wish we could have talked more.

 

naomiandross ala2013Ross Todd, my beloved and inspiring former Professor at Rutgers:
So many of you may be familiar with his work but I know him as my inspirational Human Information Behavior professor first and foremost.  Wishing I could have as storied and far-reaching a career.  So excited to meet again.  And also a huge shout-out to everyone I met at the Rutgers booth.

 

I was also able to present twice on Saturday thanks to the invitation of Nancy Faget, federal librarian extraordinaire and Careers in Federal Libraries guru!  I presented on a panel with Nancy Faget, Marie Koko, Jodi Peterson, Katie Rapp and two of my INALJ Head Editors, Julie Watson and Rachael Altman!  Then Katie interviewed me for a virtual live=chat.

 

John Berry of Library Journal: Was delighted to sit with John Berry of Library Journal at the Movers & Shakers lunch as I follow him on LJ!

John Scalzi, Lotus award winner and Speaker at the Movers & Shakers lunch:  He gave a moving, passionate and funny speech and I am excited to read his new book!

Lydia Willoughby: INALJ Success Story interviewee, Mover and Shaker and fantastic Que(e)ry Party organizer!  So nice to meet in person and also we both got to chat with Meredith Schwartz of LJ!

Rory Litwin of all things Library Juice: Library Juice Press and the wonderful Library Juice Academy– please check them out and consider attending some of their courses online!  Another gracious INALJ interviewee.

My table-mates at the Library Journal Movers & Shakers lunch were a fantastic group including Sophie Brookover, Rebecca Zarazan Dunn, Melissa Zymboly DepperMatthew Winner, as well as Raymond Pun, Steven Flynn and John Berry!  I also briefly chatted with JP Porcaro and Ben Bizzle, both of whom I know originally through ALA Think Tank, a non-ALA affiliated Facebook group.

Special shout out to all the fans and interviewees I bumped into including (the other non-Natalie), Naomi Wolfson!

Hoping to see you all again next year, inshallah 🙂

columbusohio

 

updated from 7/3/13

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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