Reflecting on my first year as a Head Editor

by Amanda Viana, Head Editor, INALJ Massachusetts

Reflecting on my first year as a Head Editor

amandavianaAs the end of the year approaches I, like most people, have found myself reflecting on the past year. It hasn’t quite been a year since I started as the Head Editor of the INALJ MA page, but a lot has changed. I first started volunteering with INALJ as an assistant for the CA page. Two or three times a week I’d check my assigned websites and submit jobs to editors. I liked contributing, as INALJ had been an invaluable resource when I was looking for a professional position. When Naomi announced her intention to start state pages I jumped at the chance. I was excited about the changes and the opportunity to help others in my home state.

Becoming Head Editor meant checking multiple sites for jobs five days a week, blogging monthly, and eventually managing Assistant Editors—without whom INALJ MA would not be what it is today. Thank you Grace, Amelia, Karen & Theo for all your hard work! There have been a lot of adjustments and learning experiences, but being a Head Editor has been an overwhelmingly positive experience. Recently I had to make the decision whether to stay on as a Head Editor. I didn’t want to make a snap decision; as much as I love being a part of INALJ, it is a commitment that requires a lot of time and responsibility and I wanted to be sure before I committed to another year.

Ultimately I decided to stay on as Head Editor. I didn’t want to give up the chance to spend another year helping the information professionals from my state. Through daily job postings, monthly blogs and posts on social media (follow us! @INALJ_MA) I feel as though I’m contributing to the success of others in my field and that is an incredible opportunity to be given. INALJ had some technical difficulties this month, and I was unable to update the INALJ MA page for a solid week. The frustration and helplessness I felt when I was unable to perform my duties and had to update the Twitter account with apologies rather than excitement just reinforced my decision to stay.

In addition to sharing the pride I take in the work of INALJ, I want to take the opportunity to thank everyone in the organization, from Naomi, to editors, assistants, and site users, for creating a positive, supportive environment for information professionals. To support each other through difficulty, to give and receive help with school and career advice, to celebrate each others successes and help each other through troubles—this is what INALJ means to me. I am a proud and happy member of this community and I look forward to contributing more to its success. I can’t wait to see what 2014 will bring!

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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