Laptop hunthi, random

by Meredith Farkas on 1/3/2005 with Comments Off on Laptop hunt

Since I may be moving to a very tiny apartment in Chicago soon, I thought it best to trade in my old desktop for a swanky new laptop (the CPU is just a bit to heavy to put on my lap). I haven’t been in the market for a laptop since 1998, so I’ve been …

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What we have…hi, random

by Meredith Farkas on 12/28/2004 with Comments Off on What we have…

I don’t know what I could say that hasn’t already been said about the disaster in southeast Asia on Sunday. It is a tragedy beyond my comprehension — easily the worst thing that has ever happened in my lifetime. So many tens of thousands of people of all ages and from all walks of life… …

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New Cites & Insights and Simpsons puzzlerandom

by Meredith Farkas on 12/27/2004 with Comments Off on New Cites & Insights and Simpsons puzzle

Hi! The newest issue (Jan ’05) of Cites and Insights is out with some commentary on conference blogging, blogging ethics, and a bit on Google Print. Walt Crawford brings up the blog ethics debate started by Karen at Free Range Librarian: Karen paints herself in the awkward middle — people who want to do the …

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Happy Holidaysrandom

by Meredith Farkas on 12/24/2004 with Comments Off on Happy Holidays

This will be my last post before Christmas. My posts may be a bit sporadic until Tuesday as my adorable niece and nephew are coming down for a visit with my sister-in-law. YAY! Here are pics of my niece and nephew at our wedding last August: Are they insanely cute or what? I hope everyone …

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The sound of silencerandom

by Meredith Farkas on 12/22/2004 with 1 comment

I’m not one of those people who really notices the sound my computer makes. All through college I practically slept with my laptop on the bed next to me (how romantic!). My husband, on the other hand, is really sensitive to noise, and has made it his life’s mission to build silent and cool running …

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Teens in the librarylibraries, random

by Meredith Farkas on 12/22/2004 with 4 comments

Since I was up for a teen librarian position (which I did not get, sigh…) I’ve been thinking a lot about what libraries do for teens. The library I was interviewing at had a small area by the DVDs that was called the “teen section.” All this consisted of was YA books and magazines and …

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Discretely bloggingour digital future, random

by Meredith Farkas on 12/19/2004 with Comments Off on Discretely blogging

I don’t always agree with everything Free Range Librarian writes, but I think she is pretty darn right in her entry today about confidentiality and discretion. We librarians are all about free speech. But the First Amendment won’t make you less of a chump for kiss-and-tell blogging, and it won’t expunge the stain to your …

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Art by children’s book illustrators for charityrandom

by Meredith Farkas on 12/12/2004 with Comments Off on Art by children’s book illustrators for charity

I just found this lovely site with snowflakes created by children’s book illustrators. Each snowflake will be auctioned off (on Ebay) to support the Dana Farber Cancer Institute. I’m sure some of the illustrators will be familiar to many of you, and their work represents the variety of styles of children’s book illustrations. My favorite …

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Denmarklibraries, random

by Meredith Farkas on 12/11/2004 with 2 comments

When I looked at my page stats (which this time actually told me that someone other than my husband was reading my blog – woo hoo!) I found that people in Denmark had visited my site. I actually studied in Copenhagen for almost a year, and I think it is one of the best places …

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Do blogs need a code of ethics?our digital future, random

by Meredith Farkas on 12/11/2004 with Comments Off on Do blogs need a code of ethics?

Karen Schneider of Free Range Librarian has written a thought-provoking piece about blogging ethics. She says that librarian bloggers need a code of ethics because “too many of us want to be considered serious citizen-journalists, when it suits us, but fall back on ‘hey, it’s only a blog’ when we’d rather post first and fact-check …

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The Librarianrandom

by Meredith Farkas on 12/6/2004 with Comments Off on The Librarian

Wow, that was a bad movie. Every cheesy action movie and librarian cliche were stunningly in evidence, and I really feel that I should strongly caution Noah Wylie not to quit his day job at ER after this season (BIG mistake) . Cheesy can oftentimes be funny, but, in my opinion, this really wasn’t funny. …

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First holiday as a married couplerandom

by Meredith Farkas on 12/4/2004 with Comments Off on First holiday as a married couple

This year, my husband and I hosted Thanksgiving for the first time and it was a rousing success. Here is a picture of the table before the guests arrived. And here’s me (or part of me) setting the table. My mother-in-law is quite the gourmet, and my father is quite picky, so any praise from …

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A-List Weblogsour digital future, random

by Meredith Farkas on 11/27/2004 with 2 comments

I recently read an interesting article for my Information Retrieval course about Power Laws and Weblogs, which I found very interesting in light of my recent forrays into blogging. The author states that blogs follow the same power laws that affect most social and economic systems. “A new social system starts, and seems delightfully free …

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Counting and counting and countingrandom

by Meredith Farkas on 11/27/2004 with Comments Off on Counting and counting and counting

According to Wired, the GAO is going to investigate how the vote was counted and during the election, particularly in hotly contested states like Ohio and Florida. This comes on the heels of many discoveries across the country of machines that were “incorrectly programmed” to give the advantage to Bush, and other irregularities. This is …

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Ah but California…hi, random

by Meredith Farkas on 11/23/2004 with 1 comment

My hubby and I got married in the Napa Valley about 4 months ago and spent our honeymoon travelling around the CA coast. My dream is to live out there, but hubby says it’s unrealistic (considering housing costs, distance from our families, and all that). Sometimes I even start thinking that maybe I’m just romanticizing …

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