A librarian is born!library school

by Meredith Farkas on 5/14/2005 with 3 comments

I just want to wish a hearty congratulations to Dorothea Salo who just received her MLS today. So glad you made it through! Ever since I started reading her blog, Dorothea has inspired and challenged me with her insightful comments and consistent questioning of the conventional wisdom (about everything). If you don’t read her blog, …

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Dumb down the catalog? Yes, let’s!libraries, our digital future, tech trends

by Meredith Farkas on 5/13/2005 with 5 comments

I recently had an interesting discussion with a librarian regarding the usability of OPACs. I, as usual, was arguing that there are lessons to be learned from Google, RedLightGreen, and Amazon in how information retrieval systems should be designed. He replied, “at some point don’t you think the responsibility should rest on the students? How …

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Oh Canada!libraries, our digital future, tech trends

by Meredith Farkas on 5/8/2005 with 7 comments

I’ve never really been “up” on Canada. For one, I’ve never been there (not that I wouldn’t like to, but the opportunity has not presented itself yet). Two, I, like many Americans, sadly know very little about Canadian geography, politics, history, culture etc. But I’ve become very enchanted with Canada over the past few months …

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For those who think there is a librarian shortage (and those who don’t)job search

by Meredith Farkas on 5/5/2005 with 10 comments

FINALLY there is a thoughtful article on the entry-level library job shortage! Finally, there is an article that actually uses current research to describe the job market rather than statistics that are based on projections that are based on fallacies. I urge everyone to read this Library Journal article by Rachel Holt and Adrienne Strock, …

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Wiki spamWikis

by Meredith Farkas on 5/4/2005 with Comments Off on Wiki spam

So we got our first wiki spam today. Yuck! Fortunately, the offending content was only up for a very short period of time. Kudos to the valiant member of the ALA Chicago Wiki community who quickly removed the spam. The system does work!

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Fanning a flamer’s fireblogging

by Meredith Farkas on 4/29/2005 with 7 comments

Why do people like Michael Gorman and Blaise Cronin (and note that I will not link to any of their articles, but you can find critiques at Free Range Librarian and Pattern Recognition) write these controversial rants about blogs and bloggers? Is it because they want to change people’s minds and make them stop blogging …

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Jybe: Take Tworeference, tech trends

by Meredith Farkas on 4/28/2005 with Comments Off on Jybe: Take Two

I still have not been able to install the Jybe extension in Firefox without my computer melting down, but I have been successful in getting it to work in IE (not that I really want to be using IE). Yesterday, I did a test run of Jybe with Stephen Francoeur, The Teaching Librarian. We co-browsed …

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Wiki EtiquetteALA, Wikis

by Meredith Farkas on 4/27/2005 with 2 comments

It has been interesting to observe how people have approached the wiki I created. I’ve been thrilled to see that people are contributing to it and have added some great tips! However, I’ve gotten several emails and comments suggesting topics, instructions, and other things that could go into the wiki. That’s nice that people are …

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ALA Conference WikiALA

by Meredith Farkas on 4/23/2005 with 4 comments

Last year, I went to my first ALA Conference, which was also my first library conference ever. Before going, I really had no idea what to expect. So I had to make my own mistakes – going to the wrong room when the location of a session had changed that very day, not bringing a …

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Camtasia vs. CaptivateGeneral

by Meredith Farkas on 4/16/2005 with 24 comments

Note: This review is from 2005 and is not relevant to current versions of Camtasia and Captivate. A few years ago, my husband bought Camtasia 1.1 so that we could create software demos for his business. While there were certainly a number of problems with the software, it gave us what we wanted, and we …

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The innovation gaplibraries

by Meredith Farkas on 4/13/2005 with 4 comments

George at It’s all good just got back from giving a presentation at the New Jersey Library Association where he was asked a difficult question: This was an excellent audience, full of questions, comments, and well-considered opinion. But one question stopped me in my tracks. One public library director explained his frustration in seeing the …

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The Failure of Middleware, Part 7: OAI and Google Scholarlibraries, our digital future, search

by Meredith Farkas on 4/7/2005 with 2 comments

The Open Archives Initiative develops interoperability standards with the goal of developing easy ways to access digital content and improve scholarly communication. They have developed a protocol for harvesting XML-formatted metadata from text repositories. If all e-content providers used open metadata standards, libraries could harvest metadata from a variety of places so that it could …

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The Failure of Middleware, Part 5: The Unintegrated Library System & Federated Searchlibraries, our digital future, search

by Meredith Farkas on 4/7/2005 with 1 comment

Sorry for the delay in posting the rest of this, but we were flying to Florida yesterday to visit family. Nice to be in consistently warm weather for a few days. 🙂 When library catalogs were first developed, all of the electronic needs of a library system were fulfilled by the ILS. At the time, …

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Gratuitous pet picsjob search, random

by Meredith Farkas on 4/6/2005 with Comments Off on Gratuitous pet pics

I have been wanting to own a dog since I moved away from home — and our family dog — to attend college in Connecticut. This desire has only intensified as the years have passed. I have frequent dreams about owning a dog and I’ve even named him/her (Riley). All of my close friends and …

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More from Google Mapsour digital future, reference

by Meredith Farkas on 4/5/2005 with Comments Off on More from Google Maps

A few months ago, Google had purchased Keyhole, a program that allowed you to look at satellite photos of anywhere in the U.S. They allowed users to download it for free for a week or so and play with it. I enjoyed it, but it wasn’t until today that I got to see what Google …

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