Interviews, Success Stories

Carrie Wardzinski …In Six

Naomi: How did you find your current job?

Carrie:   I subscribe to a listserv that the Pittsburgh Chapter of SLA puts out.  Each week, jobs in the region are compiled and emailed through the listserv.  During one particular week, three jobs in theological libraries popped up and I felt compelled to apply to all three since my undergraduate degree is in religion.  I applied, was invited for a tour of Trinity‘s campus, had a short interview, and the rest is history!

Naomi: Favorite library you have been to?

Carrie: The main branch of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh will always be my favorite library, just because of the sheer number of hours I spent there as a teenager.  However, I’m also very fond of the Chicago Public Library, which I visited this summer, and of the Braddock Carnegie Library, which was the first Carnegie library and is located in the area where I grew up.

Naomi: Favorite book?

Carrie: I don’t have a favorite book, per se, but the book that made the earliest and biggest impression on me is Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle In Time.  I also love The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien.

Naomi: Favorite thing about libraries/library technology?

Carrie: I know that many things are focused on these amazing technologies we have right now, but I truly love the special and rare collections that libraries have.

Naomi: Any websites or feeds or blogs we should be following?

Carrie: Ars Technica

Naomi: Best piece of job hunting advice?

Carrie: Be flexible, whether it’s location or in the type of job you’d like to have.  Also, take advantage of opportunities as they present themselves. 

 

I am the new Assistant Librarian at Trinity School for Ministry in Ambridge, PA.   I grew up in the suburbs of Pittsburgh.  After high school, I attended Westminster College, which is north of Pittsburgh, and majored in religion.  After college, I moved several times – living in Ohio, Georgia, and Alabama – and working in the corporate world, primarily in HR and payroll.  In 2008, I moved back to Pittsburgh.  While in Pittsburgh, I started to formally explore the option of going to library school, which is something I had been considered since graduating from Westminster.  I finally enrolled in 2011, going part-time initially and then full-time eventually.  I will graduate with my MLIS in December of 2012.  I currently live northeast of Pittsburgh with my spouse, Jim, and our cat, Lily.  When I’m not working or going to school, I spend my time reading or working on renovations to our 110 year-old home.  I love anything airplane- or giraffe-related.

 

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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