Bio information for Jessamyn West
Basic Bio
Jessamyn West is an author, community technology librarian and former community manager of the massive group blog MetaFilter.com. She lives in a rural area of Central Vermont where she teaches basic computer skills. She assists tiny libraries with technology planning and implementation, helping them with wifi and websites and making sense of their systems. She maintains an online presence at jessamyn.com and librarian.net and has had her address and phone number on the Internet for a decade.
Formal Bio
Jessamyn West of Randolph is a consultant, researcher and international public speaker on library science and digital divide issues. She is the author of a 2011 book Without a Net: Librarians Bridging the Digital Divide which explores the challenges of a society becoming stratified by computer skills as well as race and income inequality. Jessamyn speaks to local, regional, and national libraries and library associations and is a regular Computers in Libraries columnist writing on these and other issues relating to the status and roles of libraries in the modern changing world. She has put her skills to good use for thirteen years teaching basic technology classes at Randolph Technical Career Center's adult education program. In addition to being a community technologist and writer, she teaches Community Engagement at University Of Hawai'i at Manoa's Library & Information Science Program, and is the technology coordinator for the Vermont Library Association (VLA). She created the "Passport to Vermont Libraries" program and was the recipient of VLA's Library Advocate of the Year Award in 2016, and was recently a Fellow at Harvard's Library Innovation Lab. She holds a BA from Hampshire College and an MLib. from the University of Washington.Other bullet-point type information that may or may not be helpful.
- former ALA Councilor
- Hampshire College undergrad
- UW graduate [University of Washington], MLib. 1996
- Author of Without a Net: Librarians Bridging the Digital Divide (website)
- Co-editor Revolting Librarians Redux
- librarian.net was one of the first librarian weblogs
- Community manager at metafilter.com especially the question asking/answering part of the site Ask Metafilter.
- Official blogger at the Democratic National Convention 2004
- "the FBI has not been here" signs
- Wikipedia article