Want an awesome job?ALA, career, libraries

by Meredith Farkas on 7/6/2008 with 6 comments

There is a very small, select list of people who I really see as role models in this profession. One of them is Mary Chimato, Head of Access Services at North Carolina State University. Her generosity, her strength, her humility, her sense of humor, her unwillingness to be steamrolled by anyone, her focus on being …

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Anaheim-boundALA, american libraries, speaking, writing

by Meredith Farkas on 6/21/2008 with Comments Off on Anaheim-bound

Oh Thursday I’ll be heading to ALA Annual. I wish I could muster up more excitement about going to Anaheim, but the location doesn’t exactly thrill me (nor does the amount of flying and driving it will take to get there). Then again, ALA isn’t really about the location so much as the people. And …

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Quiet timeALA, american libraries, hi, Work

by Meredith Farkas on 6/13/2008 with 2 comments

Friends Lake Originally uploaded by ftzdomino Tomorrow morning, Adam and I are leaving for a vacation in the Adirondacks. This is the first time in AGES that our vacations haven’t either centered around a talk I’m giving or a trip to visit family. This is an honest-to-goodness no obligations, do-as-little-as-possible, email-and-feed-free vacation. And after the …

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Followup on Is this how we encourage people to contribute?free the information!, librarianship, speaking

by Meredith Farkas on 5/15/2008 with 6 comments

I’ve been thinking a lot about the discussion last week about speaking, being compensated for speaking, transparency, the profession and it’s (perhaps?) inferiority complex, and so much more. Everyone contributed such unique and interesting perspectives, some I agree with, some I don’t, some that made me change my perspective a bit. We’ve all had different …

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Loex 2008 goes online!free the information!, instruction, online education

by Meredith Farkas on 4/28/2008 with Comments Off on Loex 2008 goes online!

I got this email about LOEX 2008 Encore from Catherine Pellegrino at Saint Mary’s College and wanted to spread the word: The annual LOEX conference is trying something new as an experiment this year: three of their breakout sessions will be presented as live, interactive webcasts a few weeks after the conference: http://www.loexconference.org/2008/virtualsessions.htm I think …

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On not so SWIFT otters and instilling a fear of failurelibrarianship, RSS and Syndication, social software

by Meredith Farkas on 4/10/2008 with 12 comments

I went to the discussion about the SWIFT conference platform, which I haven’t discussed publicly on this blog (though many others have on theirs — and many of them offer quite astute observations). I do think it is a deeply flawed tool that doesn’t provide value. I knew just about everyone in the feedback session …

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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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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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