Articles

The Collective INALJ

2012 successEveryone once in awhile I stumble on a quote that just resonates with me and makes something much more clear.  In this case this quote by Hélène Mialet,

“Someone who is powerful is a collective, and the more collective s/he becomes, the more singular they seem.”

I see INALJ in this same way.  Though I do so much work on this and I am instantly recognized as the face of INALJ,  Naomi House=INALJ, there are so many people past and present who have contributed as volunteers and to the larger conversation.  The more INALJ grows the more it is because of all of these people who sacrifice time and energy to make job hunting easier for their fellow info pros and librarians.

I am indebted to all of you!

The rest of the article is fascinating and I am in no way, shape or form comparing myself or INALJ to the subject she is speaking about, Stephen Hawking, but it was an a-ha moment for me none the less.

As INALJ moves forward and makes some changes in February I will be adding bios and links to the various volunteers so they get named recognition beyond the first page in the Daily Jobs Digest.

-Naomi

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.