On Efficiency

So it came to pass that I finally found some time to reflect on INALJ in 2012.  I was riding the train either to or from ACRL/NY’s Symposium where I was to speak on branding.  Each day I would forward and reply to over 100 emails.  I spent more than an hour on the INALJ Daily Jobs Digest even with the help of countless volunteers and two fab Associate Editors (Katherine and Scottie).  So how could I do anything big or new with so little time?

Then it hit me.  Leave much of the manual work behind. Old habits are comfortable and for me die hard.  Sending out the daily digest in six separate emails allowed me to connect with many fans.  It is the avenue that many successful job hunting fans used to tell me they had found a job.  So by automating the daily jobs emails I knew I might lose these connections.  But the savings of thousands of hours of my time a year is vital at this stage.

So if you want daily reminders about INALJ sign up at INALJ.com (right hand side) for the alerts.  And don’t forget to email me when you are successful in your job hunt so I can continue to share and celebrate your success!

—Naomi

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.