Interviews, Success Stories

Kathy Fester …In Six

Success story Kathy Fester

Naomi: How did you find your current job?
Kathy: I am on every job search site imaginable but when I found INALJ I realized that every position I had seen was now in one place! It was in INALJ that I first saw the vacancy for my current position at Adelphi University. They called me in–it was only the second interview I had during the time searching from June to January. Part-time, perfect, teaching information literacy skills and creating LibGuides, one of my favorite tools. Allows me to continue my volunteering with CAPS (Child Abuse Prevention Services of Long Island).

Naomi: Favorite library you have been to?
Kathy: Many of our country’s private secondary schools have truly amazing libraries!

Naomi: Favorite book?
Kathy: Any of Lucy Nolan’s Down Girl and Sit children stories. Laugh out loud.

Naomi: Favorite thing about libraries/ library technology?
Kathy: You learn something every day, whether from a book, a site, a fellow teacher, or most often, a student, because that is where I learn to be a better teacher.

Naomi: Any websites or feeds or blogs we should be following?
Kathy: http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/

Naomi: Best piece of job-hunting advice?
Kathy: Have a virtual presence—create a website, make sure you are LinkedIn and monitor it, get on your library school’s job postings, and talk to people when you are in a meeting or conference and take classes online where you “meet” other educators. Look professional. Network, network, network. And volunteer so you don’t go stir-crazy.

Shout out—I will be offering a workshop at the 2012 NYLA SSL Annual Conference in Binghamton on school libraries serving the learning different population (they are in every class—ADHD, dyslexia, non-verbal LD…). Shelton’s students (Texas) all had learning differences, so I became an expert!

Kathy Fester of Seaford, NY
1979 BA, Psychology, UC Santa Barbara
2003 MLS, Long Island University
Library Director/High School Librarian, South Side High School, Rockville Centre, NY
Library Director/Upper School Librarian, Shelton School, Dallas, TX
http://researchwithkathyfester.wordpress.com/ And NOW part-time Adjunct Professor at Adelphi University! (kfester@adelphi.edu)

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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