Jessamyn C. West's Blog, page 3

Lobbying my rep about the Move to Amend project

On Wednesday I spoke to the assistant to my congressional representative’s assistant encouraging her to be a co-sponsor of the We the People amendment. I prepared remarks because otherwise I tend to go on.

“I’m an elected official in my town, Randolph Vermont, and I work all the local elections. I also work in the public library where we struggle constantly against giant publishers who hold the ebook market under their absolute control, deciding prices and terms while also being the only game in...

the work I want

I am looking for work.

During most of last year and some of the previous year, selling my mother’s house was my part-time job. That project is done and I’m ready to go more formally on to the job market. I’m looking for something fairly specific but I honestly believe there’s a good fit for me somewhere. Please feel free to connect me with people or placements you think might be a good fit. I am looking for a part-time, work-from-home job doing various kinds of knowledge management. Specifics a...

Vermont Chapter Councilor Report – ALA LibLearnX 2023

All documents for this meeting can be found here.https://www.ala.org/aboutala/virtual-llx-and-annual-conference-council-meetingsAttendee report: 2653 attendees at LLX, 1711 are reg members (i.e. not vendors, corporate members, free attendees)

 Friday January 27

ALA Bylaws Convention, Special Council Session 1-5pm

This meeting was specifically set up in order to finalize work on revising the ALA Bylaws. There were 12 articles that did not have amendments suggested and we zipped through...

2022 reading list and commentary

Here was the twitter thread of what I read last year. I’ll be posting on Mastodon this year instead.Find me there at https://glammr.us/@jessamyn. I read a lot of books this year but in many ways it wasn’t a great year for me (it’s improving) so I have mixed feelings about the sheer length of this list and am hoping to read LESS this year. I started to read 144 books and finished 142 but kept up with a few I maybe shouldn’t have. Here are stats for the books that I finished. Of note is that I’m ...

2022 in Libraries

Not a big year for libraries though I did get to one new one in Fairlee.

Kimball (56) – Once the library opened, it stayed open. This includes Drop-In Time shifts as well as work shifts and regular library visitsChelsea (1) – Worked one fill-in shift here.Fairlee (1) – I was in town for a conference and stopped by.Hartness/Randolph (1) – Stopped by when I was in a walki I miss this place.

Previous years: 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009 and some ...

Ask A Librarian: Getting News to Our Patrons

From our local librarian mailing list: Is it possible for library patrons to have free access to newspapers like The New York Times, The Washington Post, and those other big, famous ones? Or even little, non-famous ones?

I took this as a bit of a question about paywalls, though our State Library did chime in to say that there is some access available through Gale OneFile, specifically “the New York Times is available, while the Washington Post is not. USA Today looks to have a 3-day delay, and ...

Oral testimony for the Working Group On the Status of Vermont Libraries

After submitting written testimony to the Working Group On the Status of Vermont Libraries, I was asked to come to the meeting to give oral testimony. I decided that instead of summarizing my written testimony, since there was only ten minutes, I’d do a bullet point style summary. This is that. I should note that while I do refer to the State Library, technically is is the Department of Libraries under the Agency of Administration. Below are my four points.

Standards

While the state library has...

Testimony for the Working Group On the Status of Vermont Libraries

[image credit: Library of Congress]

I was asked to give testimony about technology for the Working Group On the Status of Vermont Libraries. this is what I wrote.

My name is Jessamyn West. I am a librarian who lives in Orange County Vermont. I have a technology background, an MLIS, and I have worked for and with public libraries since moving to Vermont in 1997. I’ve written a book about technology instruction called Without A Net: Libraries Bridging the Digital Divide and I do public speaking o...

CIL reprint: Your Digital Life After You

This article was originally published in Computers in Libraries magazine in 2017. Some of the advice may be out of date.

Practical Technology – Your Digital Life After You
by Jessamyn West

More and more, our lives are lived online. When my father died six years ago, we were pleased to find a Google Document with the usernames and passwords to every account he ?owned?. He was an engineer and so this was not terribly surprising. Most of these accounts were things like bank account?s and cable sub...

Ask A Librarian: Getting Live Transcription Working with Zoom

From a local hearing impaired pal: Can you help the library to get captions on Zoom? They’ve been trying to figure it out for a couple of months now. I asked them to have you help them, but I don’t think they’ve tried that.

Live captions are now a service available to anyone with a Zoom account, paid or free, but its not always obvious how to get it working. I got it sorted for my local library so I figured I’d write down my steps in case it helps others. Turns out this is a thing you have to fi...