Her Story
About Naomi
Naomi Ruby serves as Library Director at Wharton County Junior College in Wharton, Texas. She began this role in July 2023 after more than a decade in education, including positions as a librarian and instruction coordinator at Eastern New Mexico University and as manager of institutional communication. Ruby earned her master's degree from UNC and completed an EdD in Leadership and Organizational Change at Baylor University, where her dissertation examined librarian professional development. She attributes her success to strong personal support from her husband and a close community of friends and family. Ruby values fairness, relationships, and relational learning, emphasizing the importance of placing people in roles where they can thrive and understanding the context of their experiences. In her view, the greatest challenges in librarianship involve demonstrating the ongoing need for human guidance in evaluating information amid abundant digital resources, while the best career advice centers on persistence, learning from failure, and grit.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Naomi
01What do you attribute your success to?
I have a lot of support outside of my work. I have a husband who couldn't be more supportive, and I have friends who I would call family. It's really important to just find your community and find your people who are going to support you and love you, because life sucks no matter what. Even if you love what you're doing, life sucks at times. It's just important to find your group of support and your group of champions and cheerleaders.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
Don't let the grade determine or impact things. As much as grades matter, they're not as important as the experience. Failure is only failure if you learned nothing. Even if you learned something, it's not a failure, you just learned something that didn't work. The persistence and the idea of perseverance is just key. I've read a lot about grit theory. The idea of persistence and continuing to strive, even when things are really difficult, is something that can impact people's careers the most.
03What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
Right now, there's a lot of challenges surrounding libraries in general with the idea of information is completely available, why do we need librarians? Continuing to prove that we are needed, and that educators and librarians are always going to be needed. Even if information is completely 100% freely available, we're always going to be people to teach people, to help guide others, and help guide the actual critical evaluation of that information. That's something that's human, something that a machine doesn't do nearly as well as we do. There's a lot of negative feelings towards that right now, but it's just a shift, and fields are always changing, and we have to be adaptable and learn how to adapt ourselves and our fields and our impact so that it's seen and realized and appreciated.
04What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Fairness is a big one. Making sure that everyone's contributions are valued. It's really important that we take into account people's personhood and their experience, and who they are, and just sort of put people in the positions where they can shine the best. The world is a lot more gray than I like to think it is. There's a lot more in the relationship, and in the possibilities and the positioning someone in a place where they can thrive. I really believe a lot in relationships, and I believe in relational learning, and I believe that understanding the context of things is very important, and understanding the context of people's experiences helps shape who they are as people and learners and listeners.
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