Jessamyn West is a library activist and computer technology savant who lives in central Vermont. She’s also kind of Internet famous. Jessamyn was one of the original moderators for the community blog MetaFilter—which is like the civilized version of Reddit. She was recently contacted by the White House for her thoughts on their choice for the next Librarian of Congress, and she speaks internationally about the digital divide. She’s also got WAY more Twitter followers than me. And probably you. No offense.

Jessamyn has worked as a technology consultant in libraries all over the state, and she holds open hours at a local tech center helping people with their computer problems. In this interview, we talk about her passion for public libraries and the role of the modern librarian. And we talk about how different people manage their personal relationships with their personal computers. Which, as we all know, is complicated.

Jessamyn Links

Jessamyn has a long bio. Wikipedia says it best…

A link to other links by and about Jessamyn

Librarian.net: Site where Jessamyn writes about library related things

Jessamyn’s exhaustive and awesome Donald Barthelme fan page

Here’s a transcript version of our interview, on Medium.

Some great clips and commentary from the interview, on MetaFilter