jessamyn

Mazel tov, they are useful.

I met that partner (who I have been with 17+ years) because we were both active on MetaFilter which was the social media of its day. He is my joy.

My partner found his bio dad thanks to FB messenger (at age 50). They are both ADHD bass players--his bio dad a somewhat famous one--with funny cataracts and receding hairlines and very cluttered houses

CEOs tend to have CEO disease and think they can do all the jobs. 🙄

Hey that's my Senator!

LC & Flickr Commons Library of Congress & Flickr Commons: Analysis of user interactions on 40,000 images.

New Blog Post.
Library of Congress & Flickr Commons: Analysis of user interactions on 40,000 images
thisismattmiller.com/post/lc-flic...
- Organizing 95K photo comments.
- Viewer to explore user georectified images
- Folksonomy tagging vs LCSH Vocabulary
- Placing into the Wiki* knowledge graph

As the Community Lead for Flickr Commons (via the Flickr Foundation) I am really really excited to read this.

Love everything about this.

Explain your username:

Jessamyn was taken. I am a librarian for a job and I use Bluesky slightly more for work stuff. I'm also on Mastodon at @jessamyn@glammr.us

Love the moon.

Sandy was a mentor to me when I was just starting out in libraryland with the Social Responsibilities Round Table. He saw libraries as potentially revolutionary institutions. He is one big part of why I am the kind of librarian I am. He is 92 today. I am forever grateful to him. Happy Birthday Sandy

He helped get ALA to approve a policy on services to people experiencing poverty. He felt that poverty could be ended. He felt that it was time for libraries to listen to the experiences of poor people, and to say "hello."

www.libraryjournal.com/story/the-pr...

www.ala.org/aboutala/off...

He was done dirty by his employer (last century!). He's kept track of all the subject heading changes he's suggested and how long it took LOC to implement them. An unnamed person at LOC once said "Sandy Berman is a major pain in the ass."
sanfordberman.org/cityp/ber1t....

Sandy Berman The Making of a Radical Librarian

He's not on social media. Any librarian who has been the recipient of his cc'ed letters (letters!) continually and exasperatedly petitioning the Library of Congress for better, more just, subject headings knows he is one of the OG progressive librarians.

turtleroad.org/2022/03/08/s...

On this day where librarians consider the closing of Baker & Taylor, I would like to remind you that Sandy Berman still walks this earth and today is his birthday.

www.sanfordberman.org

How to Write Alt Text and Image Descriptions for the visually impaired Making your website and social media accessible to people with blindness and low vision.

I love this project, what a great way to get kids involved. If you add alt text to your images next time it will make your post a bit more accessible. If you don't know much about alt text you can read this helpful tutorial from Perkins School for the Blind

www.perkins.org/resource/how...

It always seems like a fun and transparent thing, having key high profile staff members interacting on the platform they build and work on, right up until you get your first really tricky moderation issue, community-splitting event, or values compromise. Then everyone's like "You're here, ANSWER ME"

Last week I was scheduled to give a presentation on grassroots activism at a university conference on censorship. That conference was censored to the point of being cancelled. So in honor of banned books week, here is some of the info I would have shared on fighting book bans at a local level:

I've worked in moderation spaces before, a lot. Being frustrated by users, even sometimes nearly all the users, is a normal part of the job. It's hard to balance competing interests sometimes (esp when one of them is $). Speaking about this publicly? On the platform? Terrible idea, always has been.

I really enjoyed your thoughtful reviews of these today.

From the Libraries community on Reddit Explore this post and more from the Libraries community

Baker & Taylor appears to be shutting down. A post on the r/libraries subreddit from an employee of B&T breaks the news and there appear to be other employees in the comments confirming the situation.

He definitely mentions it in the book and gives it a good review.

PEN America Report Finds the Battle Over Book Bans Has Entered an Alarming New Phase “For many students, families, educators, librarians, and school districts, book banning is a new normal,” the report, 'Banned in the USA 2024-2025: The Normalization of Book Banning,' concludes.

"PEN America identified 2,520 book ban cases... out of those, only 3% of the bans were triggered by a law requiring the removal of a book—the rest, 97%—came from bans caused by the fear that districts had of being out of compliance" #DontComplyInAdvance
www.wordsandmoney.com/pen-america-...

Big [YES] [MAYBE LATER] energy.

Sorry friend. 🫂

Tilt this on its side and you have my leaf-blowing neighbor.

YouTube video by wttv Bob & Tom Show: Asylum Street Spankers 'Leafblower'

Everyone makes a big deal about autumn in Vermont and I'll be the first to admit that it's lovely. But there's a darker side to this annual seasonal occurrence, marked when I send this now sixteen year old video around to all my local complaining friends 🌬️🍂 #HolyHoly

www.youtube.com/watch?v=qh3o...

Banning certain books while leaving other books sends a message that there is one "right" way to be human; that's a pernicious and troubling message. Not all kids have other options (public library, internet, friends) to help them know there are more options out there. It's real, and it's a problem.

Do you interact with a school library? Kids use them all the time. They get assigned to use them by teachers who understand that the library is a place to go for information. They learn that there are more different kinds of people in the world than just what they know, they're exposed to new ideas.