#SLALeftBehind for #SLA2015

by Naomi House, MLIS

#SLALeftBehind for #SLA2015

I was supposed to present at SLA in Boston on Sunday, June 14th, but on May 29th changed any chance I had of attending.  I had my 4th miscarriage and with the blood clotting disorder I have my Doctor recommended I not fly.  We didn’t announce this miscarriage widely because wouldn’t it be nice to announce good news for once, but that is why I won’t be attending.  I have long hoped to present at an SLA annual, as it has been one of my favorite conferences.  And this time I was on a panel, SLA Career Connection Seminar: It’s Not Easy Being Green: A Real World LIS Discussion for Students and New Professionals, with Kim Dority, whom I have long admired, and the fantastic Beth Maser and Margaret Smith, moderated by Dianna Magnoni.  If you get a chance to go, I can’t say enough about the panelists and highly recommend it!

Yes, it stinks to not be going but that is where Twitter saves the day for me!  I will be following the hashtags:

#SLALeftBehind

and

#SLA2015

 all weekend and hope to ‘see’ many attendees Tweeting and sharing what I am missing.  Super-grateful for all those on Twitter helping keep us all connected no matter where we are.  So here is this weekend, though I will be in sweltering, rainy New Orleans, and here is to hopefully being there in Philadelphia in 2016!
photo taken at the Florida welcome center, just because!

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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