Interviews, Success Stories

Alma Ramos-McDermott …Success Story

This interview is over 1 year old and may no longer be up to date or reflect the interviewee/interviewees’ positions

My interview with success story, Alma

Naomi:  How did you find your current job?
Alma:  I found my current job when one of my professional contacts on LinkedIn sent me an email alerting me to it. She had seen one of my posts in a LinkedIn forum, looked at my profile, and saw I was looking for this particular type of job.

Naomi:  Favorite library you have been to?
Alma:  My favorite library is the Grand Army Plaza main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library. As a child, it was always a great feeling to climb its stairs and enter into my own fantasy world. It still amazes me as an adult.

Naomi:  Favorite book?
Alma:  It’s very difficult to pick out a favorite book, as there are so many good ones out there. However, at this moment in time, “Dear Teen Me: Authors write letters to their Teen Selves” (edited by E. Kristen Anderson and Miranda Kenneally) is my favorite. Reading letters written by teen authors to their teen selves where they write about their trials, triumphs and tribulations in an effort to help today’s teens cope with their issues was very moving. It inspired me to participate in the Dear Teen Me National Blog Tour. (See blog info. below for details).

Naomi:  Favorite thing about libraries/ library technology?
Alma:  My favorite thing about libraries is that they are always welcoming. Public and School libraries were my havens as a child and teen, which inspired me to become a librarian.

Naomi:  Any websites or feeds or blogs we should be following?
Alma:  You should definitely follow my blog “Should I read it or not?” http://shouldireaditornot.wordpress.com/ where good (and bad) YA books are reviewed, along with some adult and middle school books. Following my blog will also give you a chance to read my very own “Dear Teen Me” letter, penned to my teen self, which will be posted the end of October as part of the Dear Teen Me National Blog Tour.

Naomi:  Best piece of job-hunting advice?
Alma:  My best piece of job-hunting advice is to search everywhere online. Haunt the “employment” section of companies’/libraries’ websites where you’d like to work, as sometimes jobs are posted just on their websites, and you’ll get a sneak peek. Also, create a LinkedIn account and actually use the forums to get your name “out there.” It worked for me!

Alma Ramos-McDermott was an elementary school teacher in Brooklyn, N.Y. for 21 years. She went on to become a Middle School librarian in Massachusetts, where she currently lives, and was a 2006 ALA Spectrum Scholar.  

 

Alma has just been hired for her first High School librarian job, and will be managing and teaching in two high schools. She is very excited to share her love of YA lit with her potential students, and create the welcoming type of library she remembered from her high school days.

reposted from 10/10/12 – previously titled Alma Ramos-McDermott …In Six

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. 

Tags: