Anna Jones …In Six

My interview with success story, Anna


Naomi: How did you find your current job?
Anna: My new job is with an organization that has interested me for some time – I checked their official website for the posting.

Naomi: Favorite library you have been to?
Anna: The Columbus Metropolitan Library is pretty great.

Naomi: Favorite book?
Anna: It depends what I’m in the mood for – I love the Brontes, but I also love David Sedaris.

Naomi: Favorite thing about libraries/ library technology?
Anna: The focus on both community and global sharing. Libraries bring people together.

Naomi: Any websites or feeds or blogs we should be following?
Anna: I can’t think of anything in particular – there are the big blogs out there that I’m sure folks are already reading. Aside from that, I can’t think of anything small or new.

Naomi: Best piece of job hunting advice?
Anna: The best advice that I have is to apply for a certain number of jobs each week – make a schedule and stick with it. Also, be sure to keep copies of all of the postings that you respond to, so that you can refer back to them later.

Anna received her Bachelor’s degree in English from The Ohio State University in 2004 and her Master’s degree in Library and Information Science from Kent State University in 2008. Anna’s practicum was completed at the Columbus Metropolitan Library under the supervision of the Technical Services Director. After graduation Anna as a Librarian for Lincoln College of Technology. She currently works for OCLC in Dublin, Ohio.

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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