Meet Alex Perry: 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 Alex Perry: INALJ Alabama Assistant Editor & Legal Assistant at McArdle & Whitman and a freelance researcher/writer

Rachael: Favorite Library you have been to?
Alex: The Jefferson Market Library on 6th Ave NY in NYC. It’s a former women’s prison built like a castle. Right across the street from where I went to college so it’s a prominent landmark in my memories of those days.

Rachael: Favorite book?
Alex:  If I have to pick, Closely Watched Trains by Bohumil Hrabal, but there are plenty of others I might substitute.

Rachael: Favorite website/blog?
Alex: aldaily.com

Rachael: Favorite thing about libraries/library technologies?
Alex:  The reference section. The internet is for chumps. Just kidding!

Rachael: If you could take any of your hobbies and create a job of it or integrate it into your job, what would it be? And how?
Alex:  Since I don’t currently work in a library, finding employment at a library would help me integrate my favorite hobby into my job. Favorite hobby=books, reading books, talking about books, thinking about books.

Rachael: You have been working in libraries for a number of rayears–what positions have you held? How did you get these jobs?
Alex: I have worked outside the field for three years, first in a couple of political consulting firms and now at a law firm. My first boss was looking for an employee with a good attitude, attention to detail, and organizational skills, and he saw librarianship as an ideal field to recruit from to meet those needs. Subsequent bosses have been attracted by my reputation and not necessarily my degree, but the lesson is the same: people will make assumptions about you based on your degree, and you may be able to work that to your advantage.

Rachael:  Best piece of job hunting/career advice?
Alex:  Some of the skills you acquire in library school look good to people in a lot of different fields so don’t necessarily limit yourself to finding work in a library if there’s none available. I, for instance, have worked in a non-library research and writing capacity for three years. But you should also remember that the more enjoyable job functions of librarianship don’t really carry over to most other fields. You may be trading a job you know will be satisfying for “just” a job. So, my advice is: Be flexible, but be cautious.

 

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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