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…
Posted inDisability 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…
Posted infree the information!
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…
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…
Posted ininstruction social software
A review of Information Literacy and Social Media by Santamaría and Pfannenstiel
Santamaria, M., & Pfannenstiel, N. (2024). Information literacy and social media : empowered student engagement with the ACRL framework. Association of College and Research Libraries. When I started writing my book…
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…
Posted inslow 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…
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…
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…
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…
Posted inslow librarianship Time Work Work-life balance
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,…
Posted inslow librarianship Time Work-life balance
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…
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…
Posted inlibraries management MPOW Work
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…
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,…
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…
Posted inabout me instruction librarianship libraries Work
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…
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…
Posted inlibrarianship libraries slow librarianship Work
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,…
The end of Twitter?
The tl:dr is in whatever online communities you frequent, do you ever ask yourself "who isn't here? Who doesn't feel welcome here? What barriers are there to participation?" If not,…