Inspiring stuff to read, Take 2instruction, librarianship, libraries, library school, our digital future, tech trends

by Meredith Farkas on 9/7/2010 with 11 comments

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 involving young’uns in discussing the future of libraries, but Colleen Harris beat me to the punch. And because she really knows how to tell-it-like-it-is, I …

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Numbers vs. meaningassessment, instruction, librarianship, libraries, management, reference

by Meredith Farkas on 7/21/2010 with 19 comments

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 libraries tend to measure how well they are supporting the academic mission of the institution. Librarians keep a lot of statistics and measure a lot …

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History and changelibraries

by Meredith Farkas on 6/23/2010 with 11 comments

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’” where she talks about the struggle to find “the balance between memory/history and change/innovation in my library community.” She says that while it’s important to …

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Tips for library job applicants in a tight marketamerican libraries, free the information!, job search, librarianship, libraries, library school, MPOW, Work

by Meredith Farkas on 5/18/2010 with 46 comments

Another semester of teaching at San Jose State’s SLIS program has ended. Many of my students are graduating and others are starting to think about applying for jobs so they’ll have one when they do graduate. For so many of them, the job search is going to be a struggle. It wasn’t an easy job …

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Computers in Libraries Recap: Day 3free the information!, librarianship, libraries, management, our digital future, tech trends

by Meredith Farkas on 4/15/2010 with 1 comment

I took an absolutely obscene amount of notes from Ken Haycock’s keynote, because it was just one pearl of wisdom after another (I’m only including some choice bits here). I’ve seen Ken speak once before, and he is someone I would go out of my way to hear speak because he has such deep knowledge …

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A lot of Davids make one heck of a GoliathALA, free the information!, libraries, open access, our digital future, tech trends

by Meredith Farkas on 4/5/2010 with 9 comments

In response to my post a few days ago about EBSCO, Sarah Houghton-Jan just wrote an impassioned post about unethical vendor practices, suggesting that we let our vendors know when we are not happy with what they’re doing. While I do agree that libraries should make their dissatisfaction with specific vendors or vendor practices known …

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Shades of grayassessment, librarianship, libraries, open source, our digital future, tech trends

by Meredith Farkas on 11/2/2009 with 26 comments

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 some of us (me included, at times) tend to see library products and library vendors. Stephen Abram’s “position paper” on open source ILSes got me …

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Day 3 in the life of a head of instructional initiativeslibrarianship, libraries, librarydayinthelife, Work

by Meredith Farkas on 7/31/2009 with 3 comments

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 question to our Archives. 8:30 am – Director called me into her office to let me know that she’d heard back from the office that …

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Great new books on my “to read” listassessment, librarianship, libraries, our digital future, social software, tech trends, writing

by Meredith Farkas on 7/6/2009 with 3 comments

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 I’m absolutely dying to read! This is torture! The one I’m probably most excited about is Chrystie Hill’s long-awaited Inside, Outside and Online which is …

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2.0 or and bustblogging, libraries, RSS and Syndication, screencasting, social bookmarking, social software, tech trends, Wikis

by Meredith Farkas on 7/4/2009 with 11 comments

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 the ones we’re dependent on personally!). I actually wrote a column for American Libraries on the subject, but 600 words could not reflect the whole …

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Do you link to Harvard Business Review from EBSCO?free the information!, libraries

by Meredith Farkas on 6/26/2009 with 6 comments

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 EBSCO for online classroom use and then are turning off PURLs to HBR articles in Business Source products if the school refuses to pay. I’ve …

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