Silvia K. Spiva – Senior Manager of Customer Service and Social Media

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

by Kiersten Bryant, former Head Editor, INALJ California

Silvia K. Spiva – Senior Manager of Customer Service and Social Media and Success Story

Silvia SpivaKiersten: How did you find your current job?
Silvia: As part of my studies at SJSU SLIS, I’ve been attending and participating in webinars and conferences focused on the future of libraries.  It was through these online conversations that Boopsie for Libraries started following me on Twitter.  About a month later, I was able to connect with Boopsie’s CEO on LinkedIn.  That’s when I was invited to interview for my current role as Senior Manager of Customer Service and Social Media.
Kiersten: Favorite library you have been to?
Silvia: My favorite library was my elementary school’s at Merritt Trace in San Jose.  Sadly, it was destroyed a few years ago as a result of arson.  It was shortly thereafter that I decided to become a librarian.  http://sjusd.org/trace/

Kiersten: Favorite book?
Silvia: I love anything by Agatha Christie, especially her books including Hercule Poirot.  To this day, though, I haven’t read Curtain because I don’t want to know how Poirot dies.  So, if you’ve read it, don’t tell me.

Kiersten: Any websites or blogs we should be following?
Silvia: I subscribe to In Plain English http://myblog-inplainenglish.blogspot.it by Pasqua Allegrini  @PasquaAllegrini  She is a teacher of English in Italy.  Reading her posts reminds me to look at the news of the day with a world view.

Kiersten: Favorite thing about libraries/library technology?
Silvia:  The future is all about libraries, and you can’t separate technology from them.  Facebook, iTunes, Google…they are all libraries.  I don’t view my official library studies as optional, they are a logical evolution in my high-tech marketing career.

Kiersten: If you could take any of your hobbies and create a job out of it, or integrate it into your job, what would it be?Kiersten Bryant
Silvia: I still have fantasies of being a good old-fashioned children’s librarian.  I could never think of storytime as a chore.  Ideally, I’ll be able to find a way to work with technology and children.  Kids are the best teachers!

Kiersten: Do you have any job hunting/career advice for our readers?
Silvia: Be genuine.  Don’t maintain separate accounts for work and personal updates. Give people the chance to like you for who you really are.  Your conversations will be more valuable.

Silvia K. Spiva is a practical marketer, who has spent most of her career building digital libraries for sales in high-tech companies such as Sybase, Cisco, and Apple.  She is currently fully immersed in the library world as a student at San Jose State University’s School of Library and Information Science, and a manager at Boopsie for Libraries. (Boopsie.com)

Follow her on Twitter  http://www.twitter.com/silviakspiva

 

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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