Articles

#SLALeftBehind for #SLA2015

by Naomi House, MLIS

#SLALeftBehind for #SLA2015

I was supposed to present at SLA in Boston on Sunday, June 14th, but on May 29th changed any chance I had of attending.  I had my 4th miscarriage and with the blood clotting disorder I have my Doctor recommended I not fly.  We didn’t announce this miscarriage widely because wouldn’t it be nice to announce good news for once, but that is why I won’t be attending.  I have long hoped to present at an SLA annual, as it has been one of my favorite conferences.  And this time I was on a panel, SLA Career Connection Seminar: It’s Not Easy Being Green: A Real World LIS Discussion for Students and New Professionals, with Kim Dority, whom I have long admired, and the fantastic Beth Maser and Margaret Smith, moderated by Dianna Magnoni.  If you get a chance to go, I can’t say enough about the panelists and highly recommend it!

Yes, it stinks to not be going but that is where Twitter saves the day for me!  I will be following the hashtags:

#SLALeftBehind

and

#SLA2015

 all weekend and hope to ‘see’ many attendees Tweeting and sharing what I am missing.  Super-grateful for all those on Twitter helping keep us all connected no matter where we are.  So here is this weekend, though I will be in sweltering, rainy New Orleans, and here is to hopefully being there in Philadelphia in 2016!
photo taken at the Florida welcome center, just because!

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). Founded in October 2010 with the assistance of her fellow Rutgers classmate, Elizabeth Leonard, INALJ’s 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.com. INALJ has had over 19.5 Million page views and helped thousands of librarians and LIS folk 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 a month. Naomi believes that well-sourced quantity is quality in this narrow job market and INALJ reflects this many new jobs published daily. She has also written for the 2011, 2012 & 2013 LexisNexis Government Info Pro. She presents whenever she can, most recently thrice at the American Library Association's Annual Conference as well as breakout talk presenter at OCLC EMEA in Cape Town, South Africa and as a keynote speaker at the Virginia Library Association annual meeting, at the National Press Club, McGill University, the University of the Emirates, Dubai, MLIS program and the University of Hawaii at Manoa. She was a 2013 Library Journal Mover & Shaker and has served on the University of Maryland iSchool Board from 2014-2017. Naomi was a Reference, Marketing and Acquisitions Librarian for a contractor at a federal library outside Washington, DC, and has relocated to being nomadic. She runs her husband’s moving labor website, KhanMoving.com, fixes and sells old houses and assists her husband cooking delicious Pakistani food as well. She has heard of spare time but hasn’t encountered it lately. She pronounces INALJ as eye-na-elle-jay. 

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