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.

7 (Must-Have) Tools for Your Job Hunting Kit

by Naomi House, MLIS 7 (Must-Have) Tools for Your Job Hunting Kit Most of us already use tools in our job hunt but what we may not be doing is using them together.  Tools are different from characteristics and attitudes because they are things that you use- not aspects of who you are.  Especially where…

The Less Trap: 8 Tips on Combating Doing the Same with Less

by Naomi House, MLIS The Less Trap:  8 Tips on Combating Doing the Same with Less Last May I was invited to speak at the National Press Club by LexisNexis.  My passion for volunteer work and reality of staffing cuts at my workplace at the time were colliding.  I spoke to the group about building versatility…

John Chrastka, Executive Director of EveryLibrary

This interview is over 1 year old and may no longer be up to date or reflect the interviewee/interviewees’ positions .Naomi House, MLIS’s interview with the founder of EveryLibrary, John Chrastka. EveryLibrary is the first and only national organization dedicated exclusively to political action at a local level to create, renew, and protect public funding…

Patrick Sweeney of EveryLibrary

This interview is over 1 year old and may no longer be up to date or reflect the interviewee/interviewees’ positions Naomi House, MLIS’s interview with Patrick Sweeney of EveryLibrary. EveryLibrary is the first and only national organization dedicated exclusively to political action at a local level to create, renew, and protect public funding for libraries…

Networking on LinkedIn: Informational Interviews vs. Librarianesque Stalking

by Kasia Piasecka reposting from 1/26/12 and 3/28/12 Networking on LinkedIn: Informational Interviews vs. Librarianesque Stalking Personally, I enjoy meeting new people online in the interest of making new friends, business associates, tennis partners, pals to toss hackey sack, and yes, you guessed it, for the purpose of gaining knowledge from an informational interview. I…

Pity Party for One

by Cynthia Engle previously published on 11/9/11 Pity Party for One Recently, a friend asked for advice on how to go about finding a job in the city she just moved to- the same city that I have called home for the last three years. How exciting to be starting a brand new chapter in…

Changing Public Perception One Patron at a Time

by Nicole Usiondek, former Head Editor, INALJ Michigan previously published on 3/22/13 Changing Public Perception One Patron at a Time Libraries have worked hard to redefine themselves, and the public perception is the last lingering hurdle many libraries are facing. The perception of what a library is has made times bleak for some libraries, but…

4 things I Learned About Library Service by Leaving the Country

by Rachel Wightman, Assistant Editor, INALJ Washington previously published on 5/4/13 4 things  I Learned About Library Service by Leaving the Country At the end of 2009, when I received my MLIS, the economy wasn’t great. But I started looking for and applying to jobs and was fairly optimistic. I had worked as a paraprofessional…

Becoming Mnemonic: Sticking In Your Interviewers’ Minds

by Mychal Ludwig, Head Editor, INALJ New Mexico previously published on 4/4/13 Becoming Mnemonic: Sticking In Your Interviewers’ Minds Clearly, standing out in an interview is the goal of most job seekers. By this stage (the interview), it’s likely, though not certain, that all candidates match to some extent what the employers are looking for…

The Possimpible Resumé

by Scottie Kapel, former Head Editor, INALJ Oregon previously published on 4/4/13 The Possimpible Those of you who watch How I Met Your Mother may recognize the title of this post from Barney Stinson’s video résumé. Beyond the possible, beyond the impossible is the possimpible. Even though the word is used for laughs in the…

Meet the Law Librarian: Jason Hawkins, from the Thurgood Marshall Law Library of the University of Maryland

This interview is over 1 year old and may no longer be up to date or reflect the interviewee/interviewees’ positions by Ta-Shirè Tribbett, Assistant for INALJ DC Meet the Law Librarian: Jason Hawkins, from the Thurgood Marshall Law Library of the University of Maryland Ta-Shiré:  Please describe your educational background. Jason:  I have a Bachelor…

March 2014 Roundup (INALJ Stats)

5 million total page views reached in March! What a great month!  The big news is we reached over 5 million page views at INALJ.com on 3/30! In addition it was the best month at INALJ.com for all stats! Our busiest day EVER was 20,026 views on 3/24, and our busiest week EVER at 104,475…

5 Million page views!!!

by Naomi House, MLIS 5 Million page views!!! Today at Noon Central time we hit the 5,000,000 page view mark!  We have had a remarkable month hitting new ‘bests’: best day ever, best week ever, best month ever and now also hitting 5 million before the end of the month.  I want to thank all…

9 Ways to Brand Yourself

by Sandra Hoyer, former Head Editor, INALJ Washington previously published 5/9/13 9 Ways to Brand Yourself: A Few Thoughts on Personal Branding and Standing Out Having survived the last year in the Washington, D.C. area in a large library, I spent much of that time absorbing and writing down what makes people successful in the…

Applying for jobs isn’t fun

by R.C. Miessler, Head Editor, INALJ Indiana previously published 3/5/13 Applying for jobs isn’t fun Applying for jobs isn’t fun. Everyone has advice to give that supersedes what everyone else has to say about finding a job. And there’s the stress of filling out applications and waiting. And then, even worse than the “We’re Sorry”…

Elevating your Elevator Speech

by Alexis Rohlfing, Head Editor, INALJ New Hampshire previously published 5/21/13 Elevating your Elevator Speech We’ve all been told, at one time or another, that we need to perfect our elevator speech. The very name makes you think of something out of Mad Men– a chance encounter that leads to a pitch that leads to…

The Importance of Saying Yes: My Job Hunt Story

by Sheela Sur, former Head Editor, INALJ Washington, DC previously published on 3/25/13 The Importance of Saying Yes: My Job Hunt Story After our first round of INALJ Head Editor articles were posted, I believe Kristen Jaques’s  (INALJ Maine Head Editor) “What I Learned During My Two and a Half Years on the Job Market”…

Sarah Houghton, the Librarian in Black

In order to better reflect how LIS folk currently feel I am removing all interviews that are more than 1 year old. This interview may no longer be up to date or reflect the interviewee/interviewees’ positions, so it has been harvested to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine (see link below) and removed from INALJ. All…

We Built a Community (on the rocky sea)

by Naomi House, MLIS We Built a Community (on the rocky sea) Community building can happen at unexpected times and in unexpected ways. I was a breakout speaker at OCLC EMEA‘s regional conference in Cape Town, South Africa on February 24.  I was speaking in a session called “We Built a Community” and the day…