Jessamyn C. West's Blog, page 5

My ALA Conference

I am the Chapter Councilor for Vermont. This means I get to (have to) go to the annual and midwinter conferences and represent the great state of Vermont. I mostly like it. To be honest, I’ve liked it MORE since COVID means we can’t travel. This means two important things: meetings are held later in the day to accommodate our colleagues from Hawai’i; and meetings are cheaper because I don’t need to get on a plane and stay in a hotel to attend these meetings. There are many reasonable critiques ...

unusual outreach

I am usually a librarian without a library. This despite the fact that I’m working actually IN a library this month until they hire a permanent librarian, and I’m also paid by my local library to do tech drop-in time work a few hours a week until the library opens up. My main thing besides technology work has always been outreach; if I am not trying to get people into a single library, I can always try to get them into libraries generally. Last October, in response to a local mailing list post,...

what you learn in library school, what’s in a name

I use my library school education in odd ways. I barely knew library school was a thing before I went to library school. So I’m not entirely surprised when other people don’t know that many, if not most, librarians have some sort of professional-level education. Library education is a curious mix of what I think of as trade-school work–learning to do repetitive tasks efficiently and within the scope of an existing protocol–and professional work–thinking about big picture ideas like intellectual...

Ask A Librarian: Prison furniture?

We have discussed whether it is ok to contract with [prisons] — is it possible that it means people who are incarcerated are learning actual useful skills that they can use to get decently paid work when they get out? Or are we kidding ourselves? Do you have any idea? I’m wondering how I might find out if it actually translates like that. I guess I could try and get in touch with someone at the Department of Corrections. What do you think?

The prison furniture thing is really a pickle. I see it...

How To: Adding fair use images to people’s Wikipedia pages

I’ve always got some nerdy Wikipedia project going. I think improving Wikipedia’s coverage of marginalized voices is worthwhile work, even as I understand and agree with many of the criticisms of the place. My most recent project was to look at the list of African American librarians (108 in total) and try to add as many photographs as I could (41, many articles already had images) to articles that didn’t have one. This is tricky work, because you can usually only add images that have free lice...

Vermont Libraries in the Time of COVID

I’ve had my head down and have been staying home for the most part, no news here. A pleasant surprise is that there’s been work, talks to give, things to write about. Also: a lot of Wikipedia work. I did a presentation for the Vermont Humanities Council, an organization which I love but will also love to be cycling off of the Board of Directors of, about what Vermont libraries have been up to this past… year. I’ve excerpted it for an upcoming Computers in Libraries article, but as I was updatin...

2020 reading list and commentary

Here was the twitter thread of what I read last year. It was, as you might expect, a weird year. And I read LESS than the year before. Not sure if this is because I had less access to graphic novels, or because I had less time on airplanes, or something else. I started 110 books and finished 109 of them.

Here are stats for the books I finished and I’m adding one more: ebook vs. print book. Obviously they’re both books, but I think it would be nice to track how much I am reading digitally versus...

2020 in Libraries

Like many people, I had bigger plans this year than I managed to realize. However, I did get to two new libraries which was decent for a year that saw only twenty-seven library visits total, with nineteen of them at the same library. The full list is short but memorable. I really hope to get back to the Goodrich Library in Newport again, it’s got a great collection and incredibly nice staff.

Previous years: 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009 and some reviews from 2...

Ask A Librarian: Senior-Friendly Devices?

I’m working with a Council on Aging and they are looking for “senior-friendly” devices to purchase for their participants, ideally tablets that are also budget friendly. Does anyone have any recommendations? Are there any resources that exist to help people compare devices?

My opinion, as someone who works with seniors all the time who struggle with various devices, is that any device can be set up to be “senior friendly” and a lot of this will depend what other technology, if any, exists in th...

Ask A Librarian: training for older tech users?

Cytheriachen / CC BY-SA

Email I got from a local non-profit worker, looking to apply for a grant, asked: Do you have input on how older people learn best and how we should set up training program?

Amy may have other suggestions but for me, in drop-in time, what often gets people the most motivated is if they have a problem they want to solve. They often learn well in groups, if this is possible, and it’s useful to have a good idea of what assistive technology is available to them in case they ha...