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.
You can view an update to this post (and an update to my update) here. In an economy where there's lots of competition for a smaller and smaller number of…
My friend, the incredibly awesome David Rothman, has co-authored a book (with another fantastic medical librarian and a physician) on Internet Cool Tools for Physicians. The book is designed to…
I just love that feeling of serendipity when I find that people are thinking about the same things I am at the same time. Karin Dalziel made an impassioned case…
Last week, my students in the Web 2.0 and Social Networking class I teach (at San Jose State) presented their fantastic proposals (via web conference) for implementing a specific social…
I know people have been bemoaning the death of blogging in recent months. I certainly haven’t helped any with my lack of posting, but it’s certainly not from a lack…
A few weeks ago, a friend of mine commented on the fact that I hadn't written anything about the Annoyed Librarian being paid to blog for Library Journal. That was…
The Maintain IT project is awesome, so when equally awesome Stephanie Gerding asked me to pass on info about their new offerings, I didn't hesitate: The MaintainIT Project is pleased…
I know I'm late in posting this, but Brenda Chawner (a long-time expert on library open source software in New Zealand) has developed a survey for her PhD research that…
I can't stop smiling. :) Acceptance speech Originally uploaded by ftzdomino Here's to my daughter or son growing up in a world where it won't be an amazing accomplishment for…
My last big library-related trip before baby is taking place next week. I'll be jetting off to Chapel Hill, NC for the TRLN Management Academy, a week-long intensive learning experience…
At the beginning of the conference I went to in Iceland, the President of Iceland's Library Association discussed how they'd assembled all of these great experts from around the world…
I got back from Iceland this weekend just in time for a storm to knocked our power out at home. It's back on and I'm slowly recovering from the travel,…
Since getting pregnant, I have become a terrible procrastinator (mostly because I seem to forget everything I need to do). So if you're anything like me, you probably haven't yet…
With the pregnancy, I tried to keep my speaking schedule light for Fall. However, all three of the talks I'm giving fall within a two-week period, so it's made me…
Update: Just realized that our article is this month's cover story for LJ. WOW! I know some people really want to be named a Mover and Shaker by Library Journal.…
I often tease my husband about his need to always be involved in a project. He's always got to be working on something outside of his "day job", whether it's…
From the library school survey, looking at the list of skills and competencies people think are important for librarians to have , there are a lot of "soft skills" on…
A few weeks ago, I posted a survey to Survey Monkey to get people's views about their library school education and what they think should be taught in library school…
A student in the class I'm teaching for San Jose State University asked me the following the other day: How did people first learn about your blog? Do you have…
In October, I'm speaking at a conference in Reykjavik, Iceland entitled The Future is here: Are we prepared? New thinking in education for public librarians. (PDF). My talk is entitled…