Jess Moore …In Six

My interview with INALJ success story, Jess

Naomi: How did you find your current job?
Jess: Through INALJ Jobs Page for Virginia.

Naomi: Favorite library you have been to?
Jess: Probably the Rust Library, which is in the Loudoun County Public Library system. It was doing most if not all the positive things we discussed in the iSchool.

Naomi: Favorite book?
Jess: Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

Naomi: Favorite thing about libraries/ library technology?
Jess: Besides that most everything is no fee? I love that libraries present a place where people of different backgrounds can interact for the purpose of consuming information. I also love customer service without the angle of trying to sell people anything. Oh, and downloading eBooks to my Nook is pretty amazing.

Naomi: Any websites or feeds or blogs we should be following?
Jess: I follow Library Advocates on Tumblr, and they provide important information about the field as well as the lighter side of library science.

Naomi: Best piece of job hunting advice?
Jess: Don’t be afraid to have someone, especially an employer, edit your resume. I had the head of Public Services at UMD Libraries edit mine, and it really made a difference. His biggest piece of advice was to show the impact you’ve made on your previous or current jobs.

I was born and raised in Central Virginia, raised by two bookworms, so I was doomed from the start. I attended George Mason University for my undergraduate, where I majored in Communications and minored in History. I went to graduate school at University of Maryland where I entered their iSchool, immediately after I earned my B.A. from Mason. I graduated from UMD this past May with my M.L.S., and was hired in the beginning of June to work for Loudoun County Public Libraries as a Reference Librarian. I spend my free time reading (obviously), watching British television shows, and reblogging things on Tumblr.

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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