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.

Pre-planning for a Low Stress First Day

by Veda Darby Soberman, Head Editor, INALJ Hawaii Pre-planning for a Low Stress First Day “You’ve got the job!” is what we all hope to hear eventually.  After your job search journey ends with a new position, you are likely to be a bundle of excitement and nervous energy on your first day.  The last…

February Resolutions

by Diana La Femina, Head Editor, INALJ South Carolina February Resolutions New Year’s Resolutions are beautiful things. They’re full of hope and optimism. We make lofty goals and envision our success. And then February rolls around, and most people look back at their resolutions and see failure in one short month. Perhaps your resolution was…

A Year in Review: my own

by R.C.Miessler, Head Editor, INALJ Indiana A Year in Review: my own So, 2013 wasn’t the year I was hoping it would be. A year after graduating, I didn’t score a professional library gig (although I was able to turn my volunteer work into a part time job in a library). However, I had plenty…

5 Things I’ve Learned as a INALJ Head Editor

by Courtney Baron, Head Editor, INALJ Georgia 5 Things I’ve Learned as a INALJ Head Editor I’ve served as the Head Editor of Georgia since the state pages went live early last year, so I thought I’d share some of the things I’ve learned. 1) It’s hard to get a library job. You probably know…

Coming to ALA Midwinter? Here are some tips that might help

by Holly Boyer, Head Editor, INALJ Virginia Coming to ALA Midwinter? Here are some tips that might help ALA’s Midwinter Meeting in Philadelphia is coming up later this month. If you haven’t been before, the Midwinter conference is an excellent introduction to ALA’s conferences. It’s smaller than Annual which means it’s a little easier to…

Sleep Better – Work Smarter

by Ruth Lincoln, Head Editor, INALJ DC Sleep Better – Work Smarter Does it ever feel your to-do list grows exponentially? Between work, school, volunteering, job hunting, professional development, families, and maybe a personal life, I know we all wish there were more hours in a day. BuzzFeed explains it well as the #1 “Shocking…

15 Online Sources for Images

by Alexandra Janvey, Head Editor, INALJ Iowa 15 Online Sources for Images accessCeramics (http://accessceramics.org/) – A growing collection of contemporary ceramic images by recognized artists that is designed to enhance ceramics education worldwide. It is designed for use by artists, art educators, scholars, and the general public and fills a void in contemporary ceramics digital…

Free Online Reference Resources for Librarians

by Amanda May, former head editor, INALJ North Dakota Free Online Reference Resources for Librarians When sitting at the reference desk, I try my best to direct patrons to the library’s resources, but sometimes, I find an online resource that may best fulfill their needs.  These are some of my favorites. Merriam-Webster is one of…

MLK Day: INALJ is closed

INALJ.com allows all its editors all federal holidays off, so today most pages are not being updated. This is a perfect time to reflect on Dr. King’s work and legacy.  Diversity in our field is scarce and something we should all strive for as well as including other perspectives and voices in all our library…

Resolutions

by Sara Dixon, Head Editor, INALJ Kansas Resolutions It’s that time of year again. Time to reflect on the last twelve months and consider what seemingly small, and yet attainable improvements we can make over the next twelve months. I used to not make New Year’s Resolutions, I think because it was too easy to…

Volunteering in Local Government

by Rebecca Vogler, Head Editor, INALJ Nevada Volunteering in Local Government In the summer of 2010, as I was getting close to finishing my undergraduate program and begin my exciting journey into the world of library science that following January, I was given a bit of advice that I believe has helped me tremendously ever…

Being Thankful

by Diana La Femina, Head Editor, INALJ South Carolina Being Thankful This should probably have been November’s blog, but it still holds true. Actually, I think I may have already written about this, but even if I have it definitely needs to be repeated. If you’re like me (and most people, I assume) then it’s…

What I Learned From the Year of Scary Things

by Nena Schvaneveldt, former Head Editor, INALJ Utah What I Learned From the Year of Scary Things It’s the end of the year/ beginning of a new one, which can only mean reflective lists. I’ve had a year of facing some pretty terrifying things. I know I’m feeling reflective, so here’s a list of scary…

Be Your Own Best Advocate: in the job search and beyond

by Rebekah Kati, Head Editor, INALJ North Carolina Be Your Own Best Advocate: in the job search and beyond I had a lot of trouble advocating for myself during my job search.  I’m a pretty quiet, modest person and I hated illuminating my accomplishments and contributions to projects in cover letters and interviews.  I always…

15 Days to OLA

by Lauren Bourdages, Head Editor, INALJ Ontario 15 Days to OLA  In the summer I applied to be part of the askON Text Reference Pilot project because I wanted to get some direct experience in providing reference services. For those of you who aren’t familiar with askON, 28 public and college libraries in the Province…

A Year at INALJ

by Shelley Macon, former Head Editor, INALJ Florida A Year at INALJ A year ago I was scrolling through facebook and noticed a shout out for volunteers to be state editors of INALJ.  And truthfully, I noticed it, but I just kept right on scrolling and didn’t give it another thought.  Then I went on…

3 Articles on Job Searching During the Holiday Season

by Ryan Nitz, Head Editor, INALJ Alaska 3 Articles on Job Searching During the Holiday Season We’re all so busy during the holiday season, it can be tempting to take some time off from the job hunt to relax, catch up with friends and family, or simply to keep up with all the craziness. No…

5 Things I’d Like to Learn in 2014

by Claire Schmieder, Head Editor, INALJ NJ 5 Things I’d Like to Learn in 2014 I am really bad at making, and then following through with, New Year’s resolutions. If I do make them, I start feeling like there is all sorts of pressure on me to get started, so I start hiding from my…

JP Porcaro, MakeItHappenDay and ALATT founder

This interview is over 1 year old and may no longer be up to date or reflect the interviewee/interviewees’ positions by Naomi House, MLIS JP Porcaro, MakeItHappenDay and ALATT founder Naomi: How did you come to work for your current position? JP:  I started working in libraries with my first paid position in 1996 when…

4 Million page views!

Early yesterday, 1/13/14, INALJ.com reached a new milestone- 4 million page views! Congrats to each and every single volunteer (head editors and others are listed in the left sidebar, below)! Naomi

Volunteering for INALJ

by Nicole Usiondek, former INALJ Michigan Head Editor Volunteering for INALJ I’m sure many of you are wondering what it is like to volunteer for I Need a Library Job. I can tell you it is an experience that I am so grateful for and have not regretted once. As a Head Editor I spend…