Shared vision, transparency, and the high performing organization free the information!, knowledge management, libraries, management, Work

by Meredith Farkas on 3/12/2013 with 2 comments

As I’ve mentioned before, Lisa Hinchliffe and I presented on and authored a paper for the Library Assessment Conference in October. The spoke about applying the High Performance Programming Model of organizational transformation to building a culture of instructional assessment in libraries (and then applied that to our own libraries!). One of the major characteristics …

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The entrepreneurial library free the information!, Inspiring Stuff, instruction, librarianship, libraries, MPOW, tenure track

by Meredith Farkas on 11/29/2012 with 9 comments

Years ago, I visited the libraries at University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. After lots of conversations, the one word that stuck with me was entrepreneurial. The library faculty there were a truly entrepreneurial bunch, creatively finding opportunities to improve services and raise the profile of the library through collaboration, experimentation, partnerships, grants, etc. When …

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Behavior vs. belief and changing culture assessment, free the information!, Inspiring Stuff, instruction, librarianship, libraries, management, social software, speaking

by Meredith Farkas on 7/23/2012 with 1 comment

At LOEX of the West this summer (a fantastic conference, btw), Joan Kaplowitz did a session where she started by asking attendees what words they associate with assessment. I won’t list the litany of negative terms that came from the audience, but I will say that the most positive word used to describe assessment was …

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Setting priorities instruction, librarianship

by Meredith Farkas on 5/18/2012 with 5 comments

In academic libraries, there are usually so many levels of priorities. There are the priorities of the university. There are the priorities of the library. Each unit probably has its own priorities, as does each individual. Ideally, these all sync up nicely, where an individual can show how their priorities mesh with library’s and university’s …

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Classic Blunder #2 – Assuming resistance is a bad thing assessment, classic blunders, instruction, librarianship, libraries, management, Work

by Meredith Farkas on 2/14/2012 with 7 comments

I remember when I was in library school, a lot of people talked about librarians who were resistant to change and would try to derail your exciting and innovative projects. Often, this discussion was couched in ageist “us” (young, innovative librarians) vs. “them” (old, set-in-their-ways librarians) terms, but even when it wasn’t, the assumption was …

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Classic blunder #1 – Let’s just try it and see what happens! classic blunders, instruction, librarianship, management

by Meredith Farkas on 1/28/2012 with 17 comments

There are a lot of popular assumptions people make in this profession that lead us to make classic blunders. These can be assumptions about the change process, assumptions about our colleagues, and assumptions about our patrons. We can go into developing a new service or technology with the best of intentions and fail spectacularly because …

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“I need three peer reviewed articles” or the Freshman research paper instruction, reference

by Meredith Farkas on 10/27/2011 with 33 comments

For the past six and a half years, I have been teaching Freshman about peer-review and how to find peer-reviewed articles through the library (or Google Scholar). I’ve developed all sorts of activities in different disciplines to get students thinking about audience, writing style, and the format of the articles they find. And every year, …

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Invisible goalposts, support and having a plan instruction, librarianship, libraries, reference, speaking, tenure track, Work, writing

by Meredith Farkas on 10/17/2011 with 12 comments

This summer, I was engaged with quite a few projects (several of which I was in charge of), but was able to make time to focus on scholarship just about every Friday. Part of that, in my opinion, is this blog. This is how I engage with the profession, share my ideas, and have professional …

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