Articles

Rudeness

I recently received the following tweets from an ‘aspiring’ librarian.

“Not to be nasty, but do any of the volunteers check links? I have been clicking on a lot of dead links in today’s digest :(”

“This isn’t something to get volunteers for? What good is a 150+ document if no one bothers to see if any of the links work? Just a thought.”

“I get this is a time-consuming ordeal, but as info pros, I am a little baffled by this policy.”

I asked for a list of links and this person never provided them. That would be the only helpful thing to do. Here are several thoughts on this:

1) Why in the world would you think it is a good idea to message someone a list of complaints, a list of assumptions, and not offer your help?

2) Links die. I would rather have duplicates or expired links than not include them at all. Every week I take out jobs more than 2 weeks old without an expiration date. This catches most dead links. If you want to volunteer to help with this email me at ineedalibaryjob@gmail.com

3) Why would you insult and antagonize people who spend hours trying to get this information out to you if you are job hunting?

4) Why would it be a good idea to attach you name to a list of tweets that offer nothing constructive?

5) Never, ever, ever write “not to be nasty but” to anyone in our field. Ever.

6) Most of the links do work. Which is why I rarely get complaints. Of course most people, being true information professionals, provide me with a working link they found if they do find a broken link. That is being a real info pro. And without a list of non-working ones I can’t figure out if a specific volunteer is dropping the ball.

When I asked for a list of broken links they never responded. This is a small community and job hunting can be frustrating. Don’t be this person. I will not justify INALJ and how it is. It is how it is. We spend enough time doing it so unless you are volunteering to help, whether it is for INALJ or anywhere else, be careful of your tone. Do not insult. Do not assume. Do not be unhelpful.

This is basic manners. You don’t pay for INALJ. It is a volunteer based product. Librarianship in general is customer service based. How we treat each other should be no different than patrons.

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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