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.

Be A Volunteer (aka. Getting your foot in the door)

by Shayna Monnens, Head Editor, INALJ South Dakota Be A Volunteer (aka. Getting your foot in the door) More than likely you are in this profession because you love books. You love the idea of reading and sharing these ideas with the others around you. Maybe you have even gone on to receive a degree…

Grass is Greener?

by Richard James, Head Editor, INALJ Delaware Grass is Greener? In the corporate/commercial world, it’s becoming a reasonable expectation that many employees, particularly younger ones, are not going to commit long-term to their new employer. Cultural and economic shifts on both sides of the employer/employee divide have taken us a long way from the type…

On Table Topics and the Job Interview

by Africa Hands, Head Editor, INALJ Kentucky On Table Topics and the Job Interview Not too long ago I was a member of a local Toastmasters club. You may have heard of Toastmasters – the speaking and leadership club that helps you get more comfortable speaking in front of an audience and facilitating meetings. It’s…

Open Cover Letters

by Leigh Milligan, Head Editor, INALJ Wisconsin Open Cover Letters One of my favorite websites that gives me motivation during my job search is called Open Cover Letters. This website is a collection of anonymous cover letters submitted by hired librarians and archivists. Each cover letter is titled by the position that the anonymous person…

Un-rack Your Interview Nerves: prepping makes perfect

by Brittany Bush, Head Editor, INALJ West Virginia Un-rack Your Interview Nerves: prepping makes perfect As someone who tends to fly by the seat of their pants, formal interviews can be nerve racking. Because of this, it is important to begin preparing for your upcoming interview as soon as you are presented the opportunity. The…

Building a national network with ALA’s Round Tables

by Caitlin Moen, Head Editor, INALJ Louisiana Building a national network with ALA’s Round Tables When I graduated from library school in 2011, I was committed to the idea of librarianship as a profession and participating on the national level. I began a position at an academic library where much of my time was devoted…

Free Webinars, Courses, and Conferences (Feb-April 2013)

by Alexis Stapp, Head Editor, INALJ Minnesota Free Webinars, Courses, and Conferences (Feb-April 2013) It’s hard to focus on the education and skill-building aspect of professional development when you’re unemployed, underemployed, or just plain broke.  It’s also tough to research new ideas and practices for your library with the tight budgets so many are facing.…

Back in Black

So I am back from vacation and happen to be wearing all black today…even my gym clothes, black.  I think that is a perfectly reasonable excuse for a blog posting of this title 🙂 Tons of photos and a blog posting about UAE and Dubai to come!

Loving What You (Volunteer) to Do

Happy Valentine’s Day! What this day made me think about was just how much I love doing INALJ.  We often have to take jobs that we do not fully love but as for volunteering we have more flexibility to chose something we love to do.  So if today gets you down or feels in any…

Ryan Jones …In Six

This interview is over 1 year old and may no longer be up to date or reflect the interviewee/interviewees’ positions Reposted from 4/6/12 & 8/30/12 My interview with success story Ryan Naomi: How did you find your current job? Ryan: I found my current position at the Maine State Library Job List. I really wanted…

Ellen Mehling …In Six

This interview is over 1 year old and may no longer be up to date or reflect the interviewee/interviewees’ positions Reposted from 3/1/12 My interview with the multi-talented Ellen, of L.I.U.’s Palmer School of Library and Information Science and METRO Naomi: If you could take any of your hobbies and create a job out of…

Best Week at INALJ, Ever!

What a week! No really, what..a..week!  A HUGE thanks to the now over 100  INALJ volunteers, especially all the new Head Editors of state and province pages.  INALJ has more than doubled its hits this week and on Monday, when we launched the state and province pages, we quadrupled our most page views ever! I…

Chris Bradshaw of the African Library Project …In Six

This interview is over 1 year old and may no longer be up to date or reflect the interviewee/interviewees’ positions Originally published 8/21/12 My interview with Chris Bradshaw, Founder/President of the African Library Project. The African Library Project changes lives book by book by starting libraries in rural Africa. Their grassroots approach mobilizes U.S. volunteers,…

Spotlight on #1 INALJ California

The response has been overwhelming!  INALJ.com has quadrupled daily readership since the launch of the state pages!  I will be highlighting the pages one by one on here.  First up is the most popular page, INALJ California! It is managed by Head Editor,Sarah Porter, and her assistants, Amy Pham, Rita M. Romero, Lee Safran and…

INALJ Jobs with new State Pages!

Good morning! I am so excited to announce that today we launch INALJ Jobs with state and province pages to replace the daily digest pdf.   In addition to each state page being a resource for jobs they also include all of the resources that we use and used to house on the AL-HI, ID-MT and…

January 2013 Roundup

What a great month it has been! We reached 700,000 page views the fourth week of January! Twenty-two fans reported to us that they found jobs! In January we wrapped up the Daily Jobs Digest as a pdf and looked towards launching states pages in February. Some fast stats for January 2013: 721,640 total INALJ.com…

Kim Dority …In Six

This interview is over 1 year old and may no longer be up to date or reflect the interviewee/interviewees’ positions My interview with Kim Dority reposted from 12/12/11 and 3/14/12 Naomi: What is your dream job and why? Kim: Doing exactly what I’m doing now! I’m self-employed, so I have the freedom to work on…

Sneak Peek!

I bet some of you are curious about our new State and Province pages.  After all, the pdf may be something you are quite used to so you wonder why all this change.  Oh my goodness!  let me tell you that by adding over 100 volunteers INALJ will become so much more robust and have…

Must Read: Think Like a Start-Up by Brian Mathews

Reposted from 4/12/12 and 6/14/12 Brian Mathews, who blogs as the Ubiquitous Librarian for the Chronicle of Higher Education and who is also Associate Dean for Learning & Outreach at Virginia Tech has a must read new white paper entitled “Think Like a Start-Up: a White Paper”. I think it is well worth reading the…

Monday, Monday Can’t Come Soon Enough

Why?  Because Monday, February 4th I am launching INALJ State pages!!!  Yep a page for each and every state and all Canadian provinces with tons more jobs, links to websites, etc!  And starting mid-month I will be publishing tons more stories and news and articles and lists and ….well the list goes on and on.…

Blahg

There are some changes coming to INALJ in February and one of them is that I will increase the number of postings each day.  Currently I mostly post interviews with success stories and people working for some great organizations.  These interviews will remain a daily thing but I will also be adding more articles, top…

Giving Thanks and Re-networking

One thing I have tried to do in the past year is re-connect with librarians that I have grown to know as a patron. I like to think of this as a way to not only network (or re-network) but also a way to quietly say thanks to those who helped shape what I know…