Interviews, Success Stories

Liz Thompson …Success Story

My interview with success story, Liz

Naomi:  How did you find your current job?
Liz:  I scoured the online resources (INALJ and ala.org to name but a few) weekly.  I also volunteered for as many professional events and groups as my time allowed.  I’ve heard that professional networking is crucial to finding and being offered a position, but actually I was offered the position of E-Learning Librarian at Georgia College without knowing a soul at the university or even in the state of Georgia.  Although the professional networking did not lead directly to a job offer, the process did improve my networking skills which helped prepare me for interviews.

Naomi:  Favorite library you have been to?
Liz:  My favorite library is still and probably will always be the Middletown (OH) public library.  I grew up there, and I remember when the library moved to it’s current location.  I still refer to the current building as the “new” location even though it opened in 1982.

Naomi:  Favorite book?  I
Liz:  have never been able to pick a single favorite book.  I enjoy fiction, non-fiction, essays, and short stories.  I’ll read just about anything, and I have been in as many as three book groups at once.  I have a stack of books waiting to be read right now, in fact.

Naomi:  Favorite thing about libraries/ library technology?
Liz:  The collaborative and sharing nature of the library community is my favorite thing about libraries and library technology.  The people that work in and around libraries are the most generous people I know.  As a recent library school graduate, I found the library community to be welcoming and supportive.

Naomi:  Any websites or feeds or blogs we should be following?
Liz:  If you have an interest in distance, hybrid, or blended librarianship, you should check out Paul Pival’s blog, The Distant Librarian, and Jane Secker’s blog, Libraries, Information Literacy, and E-Learning. I also just completed a MOOC on blended learning conducted by Dr. Kelvin Thompson and Dr. Linda Futch at the University of Central Florida.  This program is always available online, so even though the “live” 2012 session is over, you can still access all of the resources online.

Naomi:  Best piece of job hunting advice?
Liz:  I had to learn to pace myself and focus on my career goals. Which basically means that I had to learn to be OK with only applying for job postings that were exactly what I wanted to do, and not applying for every job posting I found.  Once I had that focus, I was able to pace myself and not feel so overwhelmed.

Liz Thompson is the E-Learning Librarian at Georgia College and State University. She coordinates the library’s online learning initiatives and collaborates with faculty to integrate information resources into course curricula. She is the liaison to the College of Business, manages the library’s collection of business resources, and provides reference assistance and information literacy instruction to students. In the Spring 2013 semester, she will be teaching one section of the course, Research in the Age of Google. Liz earned her M.L.S. from the University of North Texas and B.B.A. from James Madison University.

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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