The changing professional conversationblogging, free the information!, librarianship, our digital future, social software

by Meredith Farkas on 8/23/2011 with 14 comments

I have had some great discussions on Twitter. Professional discussions, discussions about parenting, conversations with friends. I’ve been pleasantly surprised that you can have a quality professional discussion with multiple people (some of whom you may not normally follow) in that medium. I have also gotten great information and advice in response to “querying the …

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Faculty inertia and change in scholarly publishingfree the information!, librarianship, libraries, open access, our digital future

by Meredith Farkas on 8/1/2011 with 8 comments

I loved Barbara Fister’s recent post, “Breaking News: Academic Journals are Really Expensive!”, about faculty who seem surprised that journals cost the library a lot. Kind of amazing to think that these are people who produce and review content for these journals. And the quote from Peter Murray-Rust’s blog stating that “[librarians] should have altered …

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Interview on mobile technologies at ALA TechSource Bloglibraries, our digital future, tech trends

by Meredith Farkas on 7/11/2011 with Comments Off on Interview on mobile technologies at ALA TechSource Blog

In anticipation of my upcoming two-part workshop on mobile technologies for libraries, Dan Freeman of ALA TechSource interviewed me, asking me about my thoughts on the present and future challenges and possibilities for mobile tech in libraries. The interview is now up on the ALA TechSource blog and I’m just pleased that I didn’t say …

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Having a voicelibrarianship, libraries, management, Work

by Meredith Farkas on 6/29/2011 with 11 comments

At my previous place of work, we had weekly “council meetings” which was basically all of the professional librarians meeting to discuss issues, make big decisions about the library and manage the budget. It was a great experience to be involved in high-level discussions straight out of library school and really nice to feel in-the-loop …

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New Webinar: Delivering Innovative Mobile Services through Your Librarylibraries, our digital future, tech trends

by Meredith Farkas on 6/22/2011 with 2 comments

When I wrote my book Social Software in Libraries five years ago, I decided to include a chapter on mobile technologies. As I started researching the topic, I was disappointed to find that very few libraries were doing anything to make their services (including their website) accessible via a mobile device. I’d written a paper …

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My thoughts on the Harper Collins/Overdrive controversyebooks, free the information!, our digital future

by Meredith Farkas on 3/1/2011 with 19 comments

The library world is abuzz about Harper Collins changing the terms by which libraries can license their books on Overdrive. If you haven’t read about it already, here’s some background info. I’m not particularly up-in-arms about what Harper Collins did; I’m far more concerned with the e-content licensing models so many libraries have been blithely …

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My new job (or why all of my Oregon Trail gaming as a child might finally come in handy)career, instruction, librarianship, libraries, management, Vermont, Work

by Meredith Farkas on 2/1/2011 with 52 comments

I’m one of those people who has a hard time waiting for people’s birthday to give them presents. Whenever I try to surprise my husband with something, I always end up telling him about it early. I can keep other people’s secrets, but I’m terrible at keeping my own. So I’ve felt like the cork …

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Collaborative tech, virtual participation, and what is an “open meeting” anyways?ALA, free the information!, librarianship, our digital future, social software

by Meredith Farkas on 1/12/2011 with 15 comments

Let me say this first. I am not an expert in ALA or LITA (or even ACRL) bylaws regarding participation, open meetings, etc. I’m sure a lot of very experienced and awesome people like Jason Griffey, Aaron Dobbs and Cindi Trainor could speak to these issues from the standpoint of someone who is immersed in …

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Transliteracy from the perspective of an information literacy advocateinstruction, librarianship, libraries, our digital future, tech trends

by Meredith Farkas on 12/21/2010 with 31 comments

A colleague of mine and I have been talking about transliteracy for some time and came to very similar conclusions as David Rothman did in his smart and respectful critique. I’d thought about writing about it myself for months but two things stopped me. The first was that I thought perhaps there was something I …

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What do they really need?instruction, librarianship, libraries, our digital future, screencasting, tech trends, Work

by Meredith Farkas on 12/13/2010 with 15 comments

I’m not sure if I’ve become more cynical or just more observant, but lately I feel like I’ve been seeing things through new eyes. We make so many assumptions in this profession, often based on the idea that we know what students need and want. Time and again, research has shown that we’re usually wrong. …

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