Jessamyn C. West's Blog, page 6

Ask A Librarian: How to get started adding citations to Wikipedia

It is fine if you don’t like Wikipedia. I do, despite its shortcomings. An easy way to get started, if it’s the sort of thing you’d like to try, is by adding citations which is a kind of natural librarian thing. I wrote an email to an online friend spelling out ways to get started. There are a few helpful tools and some “good to know” stuff. Adding citations can be a good way to get started and has maybe three steps

Find something that needs a citation
Find a citation for that thing
Format an...

Ask A Librarian: setting up a WP site accessibly?

Image by: Seobility – License: CC BY-SA 4.0

I was talking to a woman on Twitter about this but it was worth re-stating st length. Building in website accessibility from the get-go is much better–both in terms of hassle factor and in terms of outcomes–than bolting it on after the fact. If you’re building a small library website using WordPress, here are some resources for you. Here’s a nice starter page that talks about some considerations.

Vocabulary: the main thing as you read is to understand ...

Rest in Power John Lewis

When John Lewis was sixteen, in 1956, he couldn’t get a library card because the public library in Troy, Alabama was for white people only under racist segregation laws. He died yesterday, just to put a point on what “in living memory” means for people of color in the US who were denied access to library services. And in some ways, library services in the US are still unequal, whether it’s because of underfunded libraries in poorer areas, the menacing specter of police and cameras in libraries ...

Ask A Librarian: What is the deal with “free” ebook sites?

Its been an odd set of months. I got busy with Drop-In Time and then very un-busy. Ive been keeping up with my newsletter a little, and doing email Drop-in Time, public awareness stuff on various mailing lists, keeping my ear to the ground. Still acting as a Qualifying Authority for the Internet Archives print-disabled program which got a LOT more visible thanks to the National Emergency Library. And so it was natural that someone would ask me about this. Got any questions, feel free to drop...

Our Library Associations

I’ve been spending some of the wintertime outlasting the blues and making sure that Wikipedia’s got entries for every state library association. It mostly didn’t, now it mostly does. I really should have been writing this post as I went, but blogging is different from making little stubs from templates. My process was straightforward:

Start with a bare-bones template Check library association website for an “Our History” section Check old Library Journals on the Internet Archive (keyword...

2019 reading list and commentary

I started 132 books this year and finished 127. New this year: a twitter thread of everything I read in 2019. I read a lot this year but that was partly because I wasn’t feeling great, so it’s a new high number, but not necessarily a cause for celebration. I try not to become too competitive with myself and my reading. However, I did really work on reading more female authors this year and I think, even though I read a lot of S. A. Corey’s Expanse series, it paid off. That said, my...

2019 in Libraries

Visiting libraries is great. Neat things to learn about communities, comfy places to sit, clean bathrooms. I went to fewer libraries this year, but made more visits overall. Not chipping away at my VT 183 Project that quickly. This year I went to 27 libraries in six states. One hundred and eleven visits total.

Previous years: 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009 and some reviews from 2003.

Libraries I went to a lot

Kimball (VT) – my local Rochester (VT) – another...

Ask A Librarian: Graphic Novels for Boomers?

I was wondering if you might give my little women’s (boomers) some guidance as to a beginning graphic novel for us to read.

Hi! It sort of depends what you’re into. The big favorite was the Vermont Reads book for last year which was John Lewis’s March (about civil rights and the struggle for them especially in the south). It’s first person, can get a little violent at times but I found it pretty engaging. There are a lot of graphic novels at the library that are a little kid-oriented but...

Ask a Librarian: Older person wanting to learn about tech

Subtitled: What’s the Yahoo! Internet Life for this generation?

From a friend: A nice older lady asked for advice on keeping up with technology and the kids. Are there any resources you’d recommend that I can in turn recommend to her? Web pages, books, etc?

That’s super challenging because some of it depends on what level she is at already.

Online or offline information? Is she in an existing community? What’s her level of understanding? (for some people you have to overcome some pretty...

Ask A Librarian: What About Controlled Digital Lending?

From a friend: Please explain to me your enthusiasm for controlled digital lending. Please let me know what you think are potential drawbacks and downsides

Well I think some of it starts with the fact that it is the process that Open Library (where I used to work) uses, so I’ve seen it in action and it works.

In short it basically allows a library to take a book in their collection, digitize it, and lend it as if it were a paper book (presuming, of course, that they are lending out the...