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.
I hope to write up some of my thoughts on the Harper Collins/Overdrive controversy this week, but for now, I'm posting an eBook User's Bill of Rights sent to me…
I'm one of those people who has a hard time waiting for people's birthday to give them presents. Whenever I try to surprise my husband with something, I always end…
I really like eBooks, which is something that surprised me when I won my Kindle last Spring in a raffle. In fact, just about every book I’ve read since then…
Let me say this first. I am not an expert in ALA or LITA (or even ACRL) bylaws regarding participation, open meetings, etc. I'm sure a lot of very experienced…
Karen Schneider published an interesting post yesterday under the pithy title The Devil Needs No Advocate. Other than the title, it's a post that I mostly agree with and it…
A colleague of mine and I have been talking about transliteracy for some time and came to very similar conclusions as David Rothman did in his smart and respectful critique.…
I'm not sure if I've become more cynical or just more observant, but lately I feel like I've been seeing things through new eyes. We make so many assumptions in…
I mentioned in my most recent post that our VPAA (Vice President of Academic Affairs) recently gave me the green light to form an information literacy committee chaired by myself…
I was really excited when I saw the title of In the Library With the Lead Pipe's post "Rising through the Ranks: On Upward Mobility in Librarianship" from last month.…
This afternoon, I read a post at the Wired Campus blog about libraries loaning out Netflix discs to students and faculty. They point to a guest post from a librarian…
I was thinking about writing a post reflecting on recent posts about the myth of the graying of the profession (and the coming librarian shortage) and Peter Brantley's post about…
I've written some posts in the past about vendors that have done some pretty slimy things in the name of making a profit. At least that makes sense to me.…
Between work, my son and the class I'm teaching at SJSU (which is about to start), I rarely have time these days to blog. It's certainly not that I'm uninspired…
Wow, what can I say about Immersion? First of all, you have to be there to really understand what a profound experience it is. My in-laws were visiting when I…
Forgive this less-than-well-thought-out post. I've been thinking a lot about assessment lately and the librarianly love of numbers in assessment, and I'm a troubled by the way that some academic…
I think it's fantastic that companies are using social media to promote their brands and communicate more directly with their customers. It's wild when I write about my favorite wine…
I've been thinking a lot lately about finding a balance between honoring history and promoting change. Then I read a post by Kendra entitled "The tension between 'memory' and 'complacency'"…
Last year, Michelle Boule and I organized what ended up being a FANTASTIC first Unconference at ALA Annual. I was so impressed with the quality of the talks and discussions,…