Interviews, Success Stories

Sana Khan …Success Story

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My non-librarian husband on his birthday!

There is a famous quote that, to paraphrase, says that one should never date anyone who doesn’t own books or read a lot.  I find it to be a foolish quote. 

Think of all that you can learn from someone raised in an oral tradition, or someone who simply wasn’t raised in a reading culture.  My husband never went to a library until he met me.  He was raised in rural Pakistan, taught and read in school but mostly religious texts.  He speaks multiple languages fluently; adapts much faster than I do and has more compassion and curiosity than most people I meet.  Reading is a skill and a tool, not something he lacked, but he learned so much from traveling and meeting real people.  A comparable and yet wholly different education than my own.  I love libraries as a physical space but highly recommend against judging the value of those who do not or were not raised in a similar culture.  I had to go to the library to travel far and wide but my husband, Sana, didn’t just read about it, he did it.

Happy birthday to an incredible, conscientious and caring person, Sana!

 

Sana Khan was born in the former NWFP province of Pakistan. He is one of eight children and we have over 25 nieces and nephews. He owns a small moving labor company, Khan Moving, and in his spare time renovates homes to sell. Although he likes reading in his native Pashto and Urdu languages he prefers US films with one exception. His favorite actor is Amitabh Bachchan and if you can get him an audience with Amitabh he would be thrilled! We visited our 41st state, Hawaii, for his birthday in 2012 and in 2013 we went to Iceland and the UK after he got back from Pakistan (and yes, his arms are tired, and no I will not explain why 😉 !  This year we are buying our 8th and 9th houses and staying in New Orleans, a holiday town in and of itself.

*photo from 2011 birthday trip to Istanbul, Turkey*

Republished from 11/13/12 & 11/12/13

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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  1. Pingback: Happy 3rd Anniversary as a Citizen, Mr Khan! | INALJ

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