Meredith Farkas is a faculty librarian at Portland Community College in Oregon. From 2007-2021, she wrote the monthly column “Technology in Practice” for American Libraries. Meredith was honored in 2014 with the ACRL Instruction Section Innovation Award, in 2008 and 2011 with the WISE Excellence in Online Education Award and in 2009 with the LITA/Library Hi Tech award for Outstanding Communication in Library and Information Technology. She has been writing the blog Information Wants to be Free since 2004.
Going into a new decade (I know technically it's not a new decade until 2011, but don't be such a kill-joy!) is a good time for reflection. After seeing all…
In this post I'm just registering my nominations for the 2009 Edublog Awards. My Nominations for The 2009 Edublog Awards are: Best New Blog - In the Library with the…
One of the things I always loved most about social media was the transparency it created. If a product, service, hotel, etc. was terrible, you could be sure that you'd…
Ever since the news of LibLime's enterprise version of Koha and whether or not their actions consisted a fork of the code, I've been thinking about how black and white…
Don't worry, Walt, I won't apologize for being away and I won't promise that I'm going to post more often (though I have a lot of ideas for posts, something…
I get asked a lot of things via email from librarians, but very few actually make it to this blog. This question was so interesting and probably better answered by…
I know Jenica wondered if her blog post, Rambling about possessiveness, really had a point, but it was right in line with things I've been thinking a lot about lately.…
I know a number of people in the Louisville area, so I've heard all about the horrible weather they've been having this year. But the flooding of the Louisville Free…
Sarah Cohen wonders what motivated people to participate in Library Day in the Life and who we are writing these for. I can't speak for everyone else, but I wanted…
8:00 am – Checked my email. Checked reference email accounts. Answered a few reference questions, forwarded a database error on to our Head of Digital Initiatives and a Norwich history…
With many of my colleagues on vacation and no students around, this isn't the most exciting time to be recording my time at work. I will definitely do something similar…
I remember the first OCLC Blog Salon at ALA very fondly. It was like fangirl overload for me. I have to laugh now when I remember that I begged Michael…
Adam, Reed and I have been back from Chicago for a few days, but it's taken a while to recover, unpack, and get back into our routine. I'd been worried…
I must admit that the last time I read a non-baby-related book was probably last Fall. And now all these great books are coming out from the LIS presses that…
Since before my brain was hijacked by baby stuff, I've been thinking a lot about how many third party Web 2.0 vendors libraries are dependent upon (not to mention all…
As a new mother, I spend a a lot of time awake with Reed when most sensible people are asleep. Consequently, I've seen plenty of infomercials and commercials that are…
Paul Pival wrote today and yesterday about "mafia tactics by Harvard Business School Publishing", wherein they are trying to charge libraries to link to articles from Harvard Business Review in…