Information Wants To Be Free – A librarian, writer and educator reflecting on the profession and the tools we use to serve our patrons

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The double life of being chronically ill at work, slow librarianship, and checking in as an expression of care

Developing a long-term illness, whether chronic or acute, is like being dropped into a country completely unfamiliar to you. You don’t know the language, the customs, the cuisine, the people.…

Painting of a dark-haired woman in a big 19th century dress reclined on a sofa

Disability slow librarianship Work-life balance

Rest as a productive act

I’m a member of an online support group for the autoimmune condition I have and one of the recently diagnosed people wrote a post about how hard it is to…

Serene brown rabbit resting in the grass

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Toxic comparison, time poverty, and a manager’s duty of care

I haven’t written anything in a while because it’s been a really hard few months. My health has taken a turn for the worse with a new condition – also…

Golden statue of Atlas struggling under weight at the top of a copper building roof.

Disability librarianship Work

The Crushing Mental Load of Disability

Photo credit: Statue Atlas by PeterKraayvanger on Pixabay This isn’t the essay I was planning to publish next. I’ve been working on an essay about the lack of solidarity around…

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It’s not about information literacy: Why people’s risk calculus around COVID has changed

Image credit: Willet on the Beach by Korall inWikimedia Commons I’ve been doing so much thinking, reading, and writing on social media about COVID that I was honestly surprised to…

Original homepage of my blog, a closeup picture of green grass with Meredith Farkas Information Wants to be Free in white letters on top of it.

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On 20 Years of Blogging at Information Wants to be Free

Today is the 20th anniversary of this blog. I put that on my calendar about 6 months ago when I realized how close to 20 years I was and then…

Tiny mushrooms covering a tree stump in the forest surrounded by Fall leaves

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Community Time and Enoughness: The heart of slow librarianship

Photo credit: Mushrooms surrounded by trees by Valentin S. This is the sixth and final essay in a series of essays I've written on time. You can view a list…

Painting of three workers harvesting wheat and others lying or sitting down and eating

slow librarianship Time Work Work-life balance

Queer Time, Crip Time, and Subverting Temporal Norms

Photo credit: The Harvesters by Pieter Bruegel the Elder This is the fifth in a series of essays I've written on time. You can view a list of all of…

Dolce Far Niente painting, woman in a dress lying outside on a bed of animal skins

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Meredith’s Slow Productivity (not to be mistaken for Cal Newport’s Faux Slow Productivity)

Image credit: Dolce Far Niente by John William Godward This is the fifth in a series of essays I've written on time. You can view a list of all of…

Impressionist painting of four people in flowing clothes resting on the bank of a river

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Slow productivity is a team sport: A critique of Cal Newport’s Slow Productivity

Image credit: Dolce far Niente by John Singer Sargent This is the fourth in a series of essays I've written on time. You can view a list of all of…

Two men in suits record the actions of women doing sewing work in a factory

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The Productivity Trap

Photo source This is the third in a series of essays I've written on time. You can view a list of all of them on the first essay. In my…

Old photo of two women in a field gathering wheat

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With Work Time at the Center

This is the second in a series of essays I've written on time. You can view a list of all of them on the first essay. Once upon a time,…

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Time: It doesn’t have to be this way

“What we think time is, how we think it is shaped, affects how we are able to move through it.” -Jenny Odell Saving Time, p. 270 This is the first…

White flowers hanging loosely off their stems

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Slowness, disability, and the art of losing

A few weeks ago, I had what honestly felt like a perfect day. It was a bright sunny day in December that felt almost stolen from the jaws of our…

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Open Offices are Neither More Open nor More Equitable

I can’t properly describe the level of annoyance I felt when I read Steven Bell’s latest piece in College and Research Libraries News about open offices entitled “We’re all about…

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Out of sight, out of mind? prioritizing support of online learners

It’s been eighteen years and I can’t believe this is still an issue. In 2005, I started my first professional library job as a distance learning librarian. At the time,…

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Slow librarianship and prioritizing life over work

I recently wrote an essay for CHOICE's LibTech Insights blog entitled "Building a Better Library Tech Future with Slow Librarianship." It provides a brief introduction to slow librarianship, how it…

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The power of shame and belonging

In my last post, I wrote about the absolutely monstrous difficulty I was having getting off the migraine prevention medication (that wasn't actually preventing migraines) I had been taking for…

Clouds and sun in the background with a phone in the foreground that says God Calls.

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Vocational awe is always harmful

A friend of mine wrote a tweet that really made me think the other day: I understand arguments against a default "vocational awe," but much of the discourse denies the…