On the Job Hunt in CT

by Jennifer Crutchfield, Head Editor, INALJ Connecticut

On the Job Hunt in CT

headshotHi CT library and information science professionals! Let’s talk about our job situations. I feel like the amount of job openings is getting a little better.  I graduated in 2008 with my MLIS with an archives management specialization and have been searching the job market since then.  I’m one of the lucky ones who has a great part-time job in my field, but I know there are many of you who are looking so hard and finding nothing.  I am still looking for full-time employment , with no luck. I am particularly interested in the archival management field, which makes it even harder to find something in CT. Also, I have been looking anywhere within an hour’s drive of me. That includes parts on New York and Southern Massachusetts.

Through all of this, I believe there is still hope. There are still a lot of opportunities to network and connect with fellow librarians. There are plenty of places in CT looking for volunteer workers, which is always great on a resume. There are small part-time librarian jobs, like the one I have, that can give us the opportunity to grow in our field.

Now I would like to give you an opportunity  to tell us about your job status and how you feel about it. Let me know what you think about our job situation in CT. Do you agree with me or not? I look forward to reading your comments on LinkedIn here:  http://www.linkedin.com/groupItem?view=&gid=4112382&type=member&item=215666530

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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