Quacking the duckcareer, librarianship

by Meredith Farkas on 3/29/2008 with 13 comments

Rachel Singer Gordon is one of the people I admire most in the profession. She thinks so much about all different aspects of our profession and has written so many thought-provoking, controversial, and helpful things. She has written two recent gems about the whole MLS vs. non-MLS debate. Definitely check out If it Quacks Like …

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Critical Perspectives on Web 2.0social software, tech trends

by Meredith Farkas on 3/9/2008 with 1 comment

First Monday has a great issue covering Critical Perspectives on Web 2.0. The articles look at Web 2.0 phenomena (user-generated content, interactivity, social networking, etc.) from a socio-political-economic perspective and bring up some interesting paradoxes inherent in the movement. So far I’ve read “Market Ideology and the Myths of Web 2.0” and “Loser Generated Content: …

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ACRL’s FREE Webcast (for members)ALA, free the information!, online education

by Meredith Farkas on 3/9/2008 with Comments Off on ACRL’s FREE Webcast (for members)

I was thrilled to hear last week about ACRL’s decision to start offering some free Webcasts for members. This is something that many people have suggested to ACRL in the past and I’m happy to see that the organization is starting to respond: Join us on Wednesday, April 2, from 11:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. …

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Building 21st century librarians AND librariesinstruction, librarianship, library school, management, our digital future, reference, social software, tech trends

by Meredith Farkas on 3/9/2008 with 20 comments

There were three recent posts that got me thinking a lot about the growing necessity to have tech-savvy people in public services positions. The first was Dorothea Salo’s post about how many librarians outside of Systems see learning about (or doing anything with) technology as being something outside of their sphere of responsibility. The second …

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LISjobs Forum Contestcareer, librarianship

by Meredith Farkas on 3/6/2008 with Comments Off on LISjobs Forum Contest

Have you visited the LISjobs Forums lately? Well, now’s a good time to do it, as Rachel’s running a contest for those who post to one of the forum topics this month. Check it out! Get active on the forums during March, and win big! OK, “big” may be a relative term. But here’s the …

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Two Surveys for Librarianslibrarianship

by Meredith Farkas on 3/1/2008 with 1 comment

If you don’t already have survey fatigue, please consider helping out these librarians (and library school students) with their surveys: Survey about reference transactions [From Danielle Theiss-White] My colleagues and I are working on a book chapter about capturing reference transactions and could use your help. We have developed a survey asking how other libraries …

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Tech-NO-lustlibrarianship, tech trends

by Meredith Farkas on 2/18/2008 with 5 comments

After reading Rochelle Hartman, Steve Lawson, Jenna Freedman, Dorothea Salo and Laura Crossett’s posts about their “Tech-Nots”, I started thinking about what it means to be tech-savvy. I was once I was eating lunch with some people I just met at a conference and one said “well you must have the new iPhone right?” Even …

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Maintain IT Cookbookslibraries, our digital future

by Meredith Farkas on 2/17/2008 with 1 comment

Over a year ago I wrote about a project called MaintainIT, a three-year Bill and Melinda Gates funded initiative designed to identify best practices for maintaining public access computers. Well, since then, they’ve been awfully busy. In addition to going around the country talking to librarians who maintain computers, they’ve published two cookbooks, which are …

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