Don’t take what you know for grantedblogging, free the information!, libraries, reference, Wikis, Work

by Meredith Farkas on 1/4/2008 with 6 comments

As liaison to all of the distance learning programs at our University, I frequently deal with our Interlibrary Loan Librarian. We can’t do traditional book interlibrary loan with our distance learners because the loan times do not allow sufficient time for us to ship the materials to the student and for the student to consult …

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LIS Jobs Forumscareer, free the information!, librarianship

by Meredith Farkas on 1/3/2008 with Comments Off on LIS Jobs Forums

Now it can be told! Rachel Singer Gordon’s been working on this terrific project: LISJobs Forums, a series of forums for librarians to share ideas and experiences related to career development. Here’s an excerpt from the press release on Rachel’s blog: LISjobs.com, the largest free library career portal on the Internet, is pleased to announce …

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Want to teach some LIS students about social software?librarianship, online education, social software

by Meredith Farkas on 12/15/2007 with 3 comments

Starting in January, I’ll be teaching an online class on social software at San Jose State University. I am beyond excited about it! I’m really interested in having guest speakers in the class; people at libraries that are doing a lot with social software and can discuss the applications at their library as well as …

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Library Software Manifestolibraries, our digital future

by Meredith Farkas on 11/13/2007 with Comments Off on Library Software Manifesto

Roy Tennant has posted a Library Software Manifesto which was adapted from a talk he recently gave. It outlines the rights and responsibilities customers have in the relationship between libraries and vendors and libraries and patrons. This and John Blyberg’s ILS Customer Bill of Rights are two important documents that outline what we all should …

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Alternative ways to participate (or why I probably won’t be at Midwinter)ALA, free the information!, our digital future, social software

by Meredith Farkas on 11/12/2007 with 38 comments

I’ve written some posts critical of ALA in the past and have had a number of people encourage me to get involved so that I can try to make a constructive difference (instead of just complaining). So, when I was asked to be on two committees whose missions I felt strongly allied with, I said …

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Pennvibeslibrarianship, our digital future, reference, social software

by Meredith Farkas on 11/9/2007 with 4 comments

The University of Pennsylvania sure has some pretty impressive library tech folks! First they create PennTags, now they’re working on Pennvibes, which, according to this abstract from the DLF conference, looks like an exciting new way to create resource guides: Pennvibes is a framework for content delivery and organization inspired by Netvibes, iGoogle, and Pageflakes. …

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Reflections on Internet Librarian and LAUC-B Conferences (or 5 talks at 2 conferences in 1 week)free the information!, librarianship, our digital future, reference, social software, speaking

by Meredith Farkas on 11/6/2007 with 7 comments

Today [Note: This part was written Monday] will be my first day back at work after the marathon that was Internet Librarian and the LAUC-B conference. I ended up giving 5 talks in one week, which is a record for me (and probably for most people other than Roy Tennant, Stephen Abram and other similarly …

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The long road towards subject guide 2.0libraries, reference, RSS and Syndication, social bookmarking, Wikis, Work

by Meredith Farkas on 10/24/2007 with 28 comments

When I finally got control over the library’s Web presence last year (a long process better discussed in a post of its own), the first thing I did was take down the library “subject guides.” You could hardly call these things subject guides; they were just a bunch of Web links in different areas. Some …

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