Jessamyn
Thank you for this @anildash I'd been pointing people to the excellent article by @annaleen about Substack's grift but it's nice to have more things to point people towards about why it's a bad choice. Also props for the title.
https://www.anildash.com//2024/11/19/dont-call-it-a-substack/
Annalee's article, icymi
Jessamyn
@evan @bjb well then I am also counting oatmeal and voted accordingly.
Jessamyn
"A Librarian Against AI; or, I Think AI Should Leave. This zine is a decidedly unmeasured response to incessant AI boosterism. Its main audience is library workers"
A zine you should know about, by @violetbfox
Jessamyn
New names for #Vermont snow plows 2024, selected by Vermont schoolchildren. Some selections...
Skibidi Scooper
No More Mr. Ice Guy
The Snowy Pl-Owl
Clearopathra
Snoah Kahan
Salt-O-Saurus
Jessamyn
Went to the post office to buy a few postcard stamps and they said they were nearly all out. People had been buying them by the roll to send out Get Out The Vote cards. "One lady bought a thousand! I've never seen someone buy so many stamps." said our postmistress.
Our little state's electoral votes may not matter much in the grand scheme of the general election, but we're all doing our part.
Jessamyn
@powersoffour @kottke I'm glad I read that story today, thank you.
Jessamyn
@kottke That was adorable, but also a lot of people still answer reference questions by telephone they just don't have huge armies of people whose only job is to do it.
Jessamyn
Wintertime? As quick as possible
Summertime: As long as is necessary
Jessamyn
A photo of a woman from the LoCs's Flickr and me like "Who is THAT person?" Helen Clark was a prolific early recording artist, a contralto who managed to be popular both on old pre-microphone recordings as well as newer electronic ones. Bless these odd reference works like "Pseudonyms on American records, 1892-1942: a guide to false names and label errors" and "A Listing of American & British Two and Four-Minute Cylinders, 1907-1922" So little about her online otherwise
Jessamyn
Random crushes on people in Wikimedia Commons. David Nunes Carvalho was the son of a man who might be the first Jewish photographer in the US. He followed in his dad's footsteps for a time and then became (if you believe the news stories) one of the world's most accomplished handwriting, ink and paper experts, testifying in over 2000 trials including a few you've heard of. His daughter published a biography of him after his death which promoted her father's legacy.
Jessamyn
Will and Harper began its limited theatrical release this week and starts on Netflix on the 27th. I know all about Will Ferrell but was interested in knowing more about Harper Steele (you know, the other star and the entire reason there was even a movie) but there was no Wikipedia article.
Harper Steele is an Emmy-award winning writer who worked at SNL for thirteen years. She seems neat, and now she has a Wikipedia article which I hope others improve on.
Jessamyn
I've been eating at the Wayside Restaurant since before it was 100 years old (over 25 years ago) and you'd think a place this embedded in Vermont history would have had a Wikipedia page but it did not.
Bonus: got to use my own parker house rolls photo in the article.
Jessamyn
I've joined the Twenty Year Society of Wikipedia editors. I've written 418 articles, I've served on the Wikimedia Foundation Board, fixed typos, added citations, added photos of people who should have them, and added a lot of fair use and public domain content there and on Wikimedia Commons.
My favorite things I've done are adding photos of BIPOC librarians, creating the stadium organist and state library association templates, and defending articles about trans folks from pronoun vandalism.
Jessamyn
My friend runs the town's historical society. People regularly give him boxes of crap to deal with. One of the things in one of the boxes was a stock certificate for the Murray Motor Car Company in Boston MA. He'd never heard of it, couldn't find anything online. I'd never heard of it, but, you know me....
A few hours later and a LOT of scraping through Newspapers.com and the Internet Archive's old books and car magazines, presto! The cybertrucks of their day!
Jessamyn
I should not write more Wikipedia pages about terrible white men but sometimes I can't help myself. Someone should tell people that they were here and they were... kind of awful. Huge props to Trove (Australia) which has a "cite this source on Wikipedia" which helped a great deal.
Look at this guy's face! Look at this shit he was talking WHILE AT WORK AS CONSUL TO AUSTRALIA. I didn't even get into all the looting.
Jessamyn
Wallace Kirkland was a social worker turned award-winning Life Magazine photographer. If you're in the US, he's taken some photos you've definitely seen. I saw a picture of him... taking a picture, by famous Australian photographer Max Dupain and went to Wikipedia to learn more and... nothing! I was fortunate that there were a number of terrific archives which had done the work so that I could learn more about him, and now the world can too.
Jessamyn
Robert Coover died recently. His obits mention his wife, an accomplished textile artist who does a weird and cool kind of needlepoint. Her life is really interesting and I decided to write a bit of it up for Wikipedia.
Jessamyn
Herbert Foerstel was a science librarian at the University of MD. The FBI came to his library on a fishing expedition looking for patron records of people with "Eastern European or Russian-sounding names." He was not ok with this. Through FOIA requests, he was able to learn about the FBI's "Library Awareness Program" which he eventually wrote a book about, along with many other books about patron privacy and book banning in the US. This was a fun article to write.
Jessamyn
@evan 100% strong yes. I know some people are less into birthdays as grownups (either for themselves or for others) but I always like a little fussing over myself so I like to fuss over others. I'm glad you're here. I'm glad you've been healing up nicely. I like these polls.
🎂
Jessamyn
There are a lot of tiny libraries in Vermont, some of them serve communities so small they don't have a "capital campaigns" option for doing needed improvements. Many aren't accessible. Vermont just announced awards of over $15mil in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) money much of which will help our smallest libraries get more accessible.
In one case, they're expanding a library so that it can have a bathroom. Not just a public bathroom, a bathroom.
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