Blahg

There are some changes coming to INALJ in February and one of them is that I will increase the number of postings each day.  Currently I mostly post interviews with success stories and people working for some great organizations.  These interviews will remain a daily thing but I will also be adding more articles, top 10 lists, etc by myself and the new Head Editors of the State and Province pages (hint, we launch Feb. 4th).

Many of the new editors are excited and getting to work on their postings.  One of the main concerns that I share with them is making these posting worthwhile and dynamic.  We all know many blogs are really “blahgs,” boring, not insightful and lacking context.  I don’t want INALJ to turn into something that is full of filler.  Quality will still be important.

I think this extends beyond just publishing webzines though and is something job hunters should be aware of.  Whether posting a link on LinkedIn or contributing to an online discussion we all need to be aware that adding context to our postings matters.  Don’t just share a link tell me why I should click through.  Hopefully the more aware we are about this the fewer blahgs we will see and the more blogs there will be 🙂

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.