Articles

New Year’s Resolutions in the Library

by Scottie Kapel, former head editor, INALJ Oregon
previously published 1/24/14

New Year’s Resolutions in the Library

scottie kI typically forgo making New Year’s Resolutions simply because I don’t want to set myself up for failure. However, now that I’m finally in my career and have a few months in the job under my belt, I can pinpoint areas that I would like to improve, and so I have made a small list of library-related resolutions.

1. Learn patrons’ names – I like to greet students by name as they enter the library, and I have learned many of their names, especially those of the students I see everyday. Ideally, though, I would like to know them all.

2. Help the students learn my name – Although they see me everyday, there are very few students who know my name simply because I don’t interact with them in the same way that their teachers do. When they ask for help or get my attention by saying, “excuse me,” I want to take that opportunity to introduce myself to the student so that from that point forward they can address me by name.

3. Get out of the library – The first semester was such a whirlwind that I ended up eating my lunch in the library every day and left the building only to pick up the mail. If I can drag myself out of the library for lunch or even a ten-minute walk around campus, I think I will feel more refreshed for the afternoon.

4. Get a LitPick group started – When I came back from the AASL conference with oodles of galleys, the book club students with whom I shared them were so excited to be, as they called themselves, “literary trendsetters.” Based on their enthusiasm, I really want to sponsor a LitPick group. It would be a wonderful way to get the students’ input on which books we should get for the library, thus giving the participants a stake in the library’s impact on the school.

So there you have it. Those are my goals for 2014, which I think are pretty attainable. What are yours?

 

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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