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

Two wet women in raincoats on a rainy day. One is holding a sign that says PCC Employees on strike for fair pay.

Strike time, collective action, and moral conviction in library leadership

I’m on strike right now, along with thousands of other faculty, academic professionals, and staff at Portland Community College (that's two unions, friends!). It’s a weird feeling. I never thought…

Whitewater rapids in the middle of a forest

slow librarianship Work Work-life balance

When I surrendered to the current

One author whose newsletter I read avidly is Dr. Zed Zha. In Ask the Patient, she writes about holding on to humanity and humility as a health care provider and…

Photo of a creepy tree-lined path that leads into darkness

Disability slow librarianship Work Work-life balance

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

Disability management slow librarianship Time Work Work-life balance

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…

free 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…

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.

about me blogging librarianship mid-career slow librarianship

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

librarianship MPOW slow librarianship Time Work Work-life balance

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

management slow librarianship Work Work-life balance

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

librarianship management slow librarianship Time Work Work-life balance

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

librarianship slow librarianship Time Work-life balance

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

slow 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,…

slow 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…

White flowers hanging loosely off their stems

about me career slow librarianship Work-life balance

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…

libraries 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…

instruction librarianship libraries online education screencasting Work

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,…

librarianship slow librarianship Work Work-life balance

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…