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.

How to Embrace Being an Emerging Professional

by Claire Schmieder, Head Editor, INALJ New Jersey How to Embrace Being an Emerging Professional So, you’ve got that brand-new degree. Hooray! Except…how are you going to use it? I know, because I am one, that being an emerging professional can be just a little scary and frustrating. That old catch-22 kicks in: you can’t…

New York, the state

by Pam Ameigh, former Head Editor, INALJ New York State New York, the state Several weeks has flown by! I’m delighted that Naomi shared the opportunity with me to be a state page editor, and I’m thankful to all the volunteers and visitors helping me improve every day.     New York is a pretty…

Work Style Preferences

by Nicole Usiondek, Head Editor, INALJ Michigan Work Style Preferences I recently attended a seminar that focused on work style preferences. This was the first session of a leadership series. The premise of the seminar was to teach leadership skills by being able to identify the different work style preferences people have and how to…

Learn From My Mistakes

by Diana La Femina, Head Editor, INALJ South Carolina Learn From My Mistakes I figured this first blog post was a good time to introduce myself and my employment journey so far. I realized, however, that a lot of what I had to say was cautionary, so I’ve decided to tell you about myself while…

HR and Honesty

by Sarah Porter, Head Editor, INALJ California HR and Honesty I just finished listening to the irreverently funny chapter about working in Human Resources in the audiobook “Let’s Pretend This Never Happened” by the Bloggess, Jenny Lawson. While I do not share the same sort of interesting stories that Jenny gathered from working over a…

Meet Tiwanna Nevels: INALJ Alabama Assistant Editor

This interview is over 1 year old and may no longer be up to date or reflect the interviewee/interviewees’ positions by Rachael Altman, Head Editor, INALJ Alabama Meet Tiwanna Nevels: INALJ Alabama Assistant Editor and Acquisitions, Collections & Assessment Manager at the Levi Watkins Learning Center at Alabama State University Searching for jobs is an…

Looking for Jobs On the Go

by Matthew Tansek, Head Editor, INALJ Rhode Island Looking for Jobs On the Go For this blog post I thought that it would be helpful to get to know a few job seeker applications for your smartphone.  I took a look at four that I had not heard of, and I purposefully avoided apps that…

Shift Happens

by Christina Wilson, Head Editor, INALJ Alberta Shift Happens Recently I attended a student-run conference at the School of Library Science (SLIS), University of Alberta (Friday, February 8th), motivated by the opportunity to re-connect with colleagues and network for my next job, given that I’ve just re-located to the community.   It was useful to meet…

Soft Skills = Success

by Julie Watson, Head Editor, INALJ Pennsylvania Soft Skills = Success This is the first of a series of articles on soft skills. Part One: What are Soft Skills? To land a job, you need a solid knowledge base in your area of expertise, but that’s not all. Employers are also looking for soft skills.…

I Love These Blogs

by Sheela Sur, Head Editor, INALJ Washington, DC I Love These Blogs I realize these blogs are already listed on INALJ, but I really cannot stress enough how much I LOVE them.  I really encourage everyone (especially recent graduates/newcomers to the library job hunt) to check out these two great resources: opencoverletters.com and hiringlibrarians.com. Even…

Stephanie Rivera …Children’s Librarian

This interview is over 1 year old and may no longer be up to date or reflect the interviewee/interviewees’ positions An interview with Stephanie Rivera, Children’s Librarian at Naperville Public Library, Naperville, IL by Chris Hogsett, former Head Editor, INALJ Illinois Stephanie Rivera …Children’s Librarian Christopher: What is your dream job and why? Stephanie: My…

Sponsor INALJ

Become an INALJ.com Sponsor! Weekly rates Your ad will run in the Header (right side) and appear on every page, you provide the image An acknowledgement posting on the Sunday before your Mon-Sun sponsorship run thanking you INALJ pages are viewed over 50,000 times a week!  In March we will hit 1 Million + views…

February 2013 Roundup (INALJ Stats )

What a great month it has been! I reached 880,000 page views the fourth week of February! Forty-eight fans reported to me that they found jobs! In February I launched state, province and country pages and my site traffic more than doubled, sometimes it was 4x the old average! Also in late February I launched…

Why Lifelong Learning is Important

by Aingeal Stone, Head Editor, INALJ Northwest Territories Why Lifelong Learning is Important We all have different reasons for pursuing, or not pursuing, continuing education in our fields.  In my post today I want to tell you about my personal educational journey and I have a few relevant links in support of personal development to…

Follow-up Emails for Novice Networkers

by Veda Darby Soberman, Head Editor, INALJ Hawaii Follow-up Emails for Novice Networkers So, you have submitted a number of resumes to potential employees, and now you just need to sit back and wait for the phone calls to begin pouring in, right?  Yes…no…maybe?  What do you do once your resume is submitted?  Is a…

Diigo a great online tool to keep your job search organized!

by Mary-Michelle Moore, Head Editor, INALJ Vermont Diigo a great online tool to keep your job search organized! Juggling everything needed to get an application packet together for any of the jobs found on INALJ can be a little daunting, even to the most organized among us.  At the beginning of my job search, I…

Spread the Love

by Shelley Macon, Head Editor, INALJ Florida Spread the Love In honor of February and Valentine’s Day this month, I have been thinking a lot about love.  One of  the most important duties of a librarian is to spread love.  The kind of love that makes your heart beat fast and your palms sweat.  The…

How to get library experience volunteering from your home

by Duda Trickovic, Head Editor, Prince Edward Island How to get library experience volunteering from your home Finding that first job in a library can be challenging. I just wanted to mention some of the less conventional ways for getting some a relevant experience. Thanks to the widespread use of technology, there are ways to…

On the Job Hunt in CT

by Jennifer Crutchfield, Head Editor, INALJ Connecticut On the Job Hunt in CT Hi 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…

On the Other Side of the Table: Interviewing

by Amanda Viana, Head Editor, INALJ Massachusetts On the Other Side of the Table: Interviewing Not very long after starting my current position I assisted the Library Director in interviewing candidates for a Circulation Supervisor position. It was my first time on the “other side” of the table, and I found the process very informative.…

Experience Gets Webby: Webinars Give Experience to Job Hunters

by Sarah Deringer, Head Editor, INALJ Mississippi Experience Gets Webby: Webinars Give Experience to Job Hunters As a current MSLS student, the biggest fear I have is not being eligible for the job posting due to lack of experience. I worked part-time at Paoli Public Library in Paoli, Indiana, for a year and eleven months…

On Library and Information Technicians: a 101 guide

by Lauren Bourdages, Head Editor, INALJ Ontario On Library and Information Technicians I know that a good portion of you INALJ followers are Americans, and I know that you don’t really have Library and Information Technicians, you have what you call paraprofessionals, and I also know that in my experience even a lot of Canadian…

We are all in the same boat

by Scottie Kapel, Head Editor, INALJ Oregon We are all in the same boat Hello, readers! I struggled with a topic for this blog post, initially planning to write about interview attire but ultimately deciding that many people who are better equipped to dispense sartorial advice than I have already covered this. While thinking about…