Interviews, Success Stories

Victoria Brooke Rodrigues …Success Story

This interview is over 1 year old and may no longer be up to date or reflect the interviewee/interviewees’ positions

My interview with success story, Victoria Brooke Rodrigues

by Naomi House, MLIS

Naomi: How did you find your current job?
Victoria: INALJ’s daily jobs. Albuquerque’s library jobs were few and far between, and most with the local university are offered as work-study to its students. This made job hunting tough as a distance-ed student interested in academic libraries tough. However, when I saw a listing for a librarian for a college of Oriental Medicine on INALJ, I had a very good feeling that it would be a perfect fit for me.

Naomi: Favorite library you have been to?
Victoria: The Alachua County Library Headquarters in Gainesville, Florida. I wrote about why it means so much to me on OffbeatMama.com: http://offbeatmama.com/2011/04/libraries-shaped-motherhood

Naomi: Favorite book?
Victoria: That’s a trick question, right? Mothers don’t pick favorites between their children! Favorites I’ve read in the last few months are: Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides; Contents May Have Shifted by Pam Houston; and St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russell.

Naomi: Favorite thing about libraries/ library technology?
Victoria: Despite my professional focus on the technology side, my favorite thing about libraries is their place as community hubs. Whether it is an academic library filled with co-eds, a public library filled with neighbors or a corporate resource center filled with colleagues, I see libraries as grounds for people to explore knowledge in a communal atmosphere.

Naomi: Favorite blogs?
Victoria: When I have extra time, I jump around through the Arts and Letters Daily. Just reading the intro lines for the various links is inspiring.

Naomi: Best piece of job hunting advice?
Victoria: Bring a long list of possible questions for the part when your interviewer asks if you have any questions. You’ll show them you are prepared, engaging, and truly interested in their organization.


I am a second-year graduate student in Library & Information Science at Florida State University, in an online-learning program I complete from my home in Albuquerque, New Mexico. This spring I will graduate with my Master’s and a specialization in Information Architecture. I am now the sole librarian at the Albuquerque Campus of Southwest Acupuncture College, which has graduate programs in acupuncture and Oriental Medicine. I run a micro-micro-homestead with my kids and husband, keeping chickens and growing the odd tomato. I’m a writer, nature girl, homemaker and, now officially, a librarian.

 

 

Formerly entitled Victoria Brooke Rodrigues …In Six and published on 9/4/12

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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