Interviews, Success Stories

Scott Wiebensohn …Success Story

My interview with success story, Scott

Naomi:  How did you find your current job?
Scott:  I found my East St. Louis Community College Center Library Director position through a professional contact on LinkedIn and my Learning Resource Center Manager job at Sanford-Brown College – Collinsville through an old college roommate.  Yes, I work a full-time position and a part-time evening one too!  I enjoy my library jobs immensely and still find time to run 30+ miles a week to maintain a balanced healthy life.  Simply, it helps to know the right people and keep in contact with them, not only through social media, but also in a deeply personal manner.

Naomi:  Favorite library you have been to?
Scott:  I truly loved my time spent in the Carnegie Library in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.  It has such a rich historic story and is a must see if you are ever in the area.

Naomi:  Favorite book?
Scott:  The moment I opened Orange Pear Apple Bear by Emily Gravett I had to read it out loud.  It is one of my favorite books to read for storytime and I highly recommend it whether you have children or are a child at heart!

Naomi:  Favorite thing about libraries/ library technology?
Scott:  I still enjoy all of the people that visit my libraries.  To me libraries are more than just buildings with a collection of information and resources.  Libraries are time machines for viewing the world through the acquisition, preservation, and dissemination of knowledge.  A library is also a means for a community to connect with its past, stay in tune with its present, and plot the course for its future.

Naomi:  Any websites or feeds or blogs we should be following?
Scott:  Personally, I just don’t follow any one source of information.  Since I’m a new transplant to St. Louis, I rely on Alive Magazine and Explore St. Louis.  They are both wonderfully helpful resources for someone seeking entertainment or local information.

Naomi:  Best piece of job hunting advice?
Scott:  My best advice is that you have to put yourself in a situation to be mobile.  It is also quite helpful to think outside of the box, be strategic, and apply for jobs that are at a level to push you to succeed!

I come from a long line of Wisconsin mink ranchers, but at the age of eleven, I vividly remember my Uncle Kurt telling me, “Don’t ever grow up to be a mink rancher!”  Over the past decade I have worked in various education settings and taught 1st, 7th, and 8th Grades.  More recently, because the field of librarianship has been an unwavering source of intellectual interest, I shifted my employment to public and academic libraries. No matter the question, I’m determined to provide library users with a credible and speedy answer.  Join me in transforming libraries into welcoming spaces, information commons, and places where academic creativity blossoms. 

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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