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

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

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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…

Image of a gnarled dead tree in a field of tall grass

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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…

Tall pink flowers and fluffy greenery in the foreground and an old white farmhouse in the background

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Valuing maintenance

My town maintains an old dairy farm from the turn of the 20th century that now contains public gardens, a CSA, and community garden plots. In the Summer and Fall,…

Rest is Resistance by Tricia Hersey book cover

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Stop normalizing overwork

In the years that I have been trying my best to avoid overwork, I've become more attuned to the signs that I am indeed overworking. I usually notice one of…

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Cultures of care and solidarity

I had a dream the other night about my high school history teacher Mr. Farina who I haven't seen since I graduated and he retired. I was ridiculously happy to…