jessamyn

Contributing to history

I like contributing to Wikipedia. I’ve written twenty-four articles this year and contributed to many more. My favorite part is tracking down odd little bits of history that may be locked behind paywalls or in poorly-indexed websites or archives which are not that accessible via search engines. And, of course, search engines aren’t what they used to be.

I’ve gotten more involved with my local historical society (Randolph Historical Society, or RHS) in the past few years. My friend and neighbor, Forrest, is the newish president. There are endless opportunities for organizing and creating more access to collections which have, in the past, been mostly behind a locked door of an infrequently-opened building. As one example, the email box of this historical society hadn’t really been checked or maintained since the last president died several years ago. And, of course, there is also history locked within the memories of people who maybe just hadn’t been asked about it. So, we did a few things… Continue reading “Contributing to history”

Miss Crabb: librarian and poet

Posted on 24Aug2526Aug25 by jessamyn

A postcard with an illustration of the train station in Cincinnati showing a very "hall of justice" looking building with flags flying outside

postcard reverse addressed to Miss Crabb, Library, Berea KY. Text on card reads "How's the lower regions? See you soon. Nancy" it was mailed in 1945 and has a one cent stamp

This started out as just a fun postcard I bought for fifty cents, intending to send it to my cousin. We had been to this train station together a zillion years ago when I visited him living just over the border in Kentucky. Like “Haha, remember that cool building and also there’s a librarian involved.” but then I wondered… The paucity of name/address, the possible double entendre message (from a woman), what else could I find out here? And then, along the way, it became another goofy “librarian vs. LLM” story which I will mostly spare you. But first, Miss Crabb.
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Talk: We have always been at war with computers

Posted on 01Jul2524Aug25 by jessamyn

two posters showcasing a talk called We have always been at war with computers by Ale Ruiz and Jessamyn West

It’s been a time. I have been talking a bit on social media but mostly just out and about trying to be useful. Everyone’s going through it. I’ve been getting to the point where I’ve got a bit of capacity and have been cleaning off my real and virtual desktops and came across this bit of a shared talk I gave with a friend for Public Philosophy Week back in April. He did the hardware stuff, talking about the tool that is a computer, and how it can really only do what it was designed to do (abbreviated POSIWID – the purpose of a system is what it does). I did the other part. Very few slides but you can view the ones we used here they’re mostly not necessary to the talk but some of them are fun. Here is the part of the talk that I gave.

A user interface is basically any way of interacting with a computer. A command line is a user interface it’s just not a GRAPHICAL one….
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2024 in work and money

Posted on 17Jan25 by jessamyn

I haven’t written a post like this in a while. The last one was in 2016. My work life got fractured, not entirely in a bad way, and harder to describe. I was speaking to a friend this week and mentioned working for the Flickr Foundation, a position I’ve held since 2023, and he asked “How many jobs do you have anyhow?” and I thought I’d spell them out. Both of my parents have died, both had IRAs so some of my income nowadays comes from that, but it’s not work. I made about 25K last year at my various jobs; I had the option to earn more and chose not to. My life is oddly simple in some ways. I was polishing my resume for no real reason except that it’s a new year and I’ve had work on my mind. Here’s an abridged version of the letter that I wrote to my friend about my life of work in 2024.
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Wikipedia work in 2024

Posted on 12Jan25 by jessamyn

I do work on Wikipedia sometimes. Since I’ve been working for the Flickr Foundation, my life overlaps more with free content. Sometimes I try to combine work and play and add things to Wikimedia Commons, or to Wikipedia, or both. My username in the Wikipedia extended universe is Jessamyn, so it’s pretty easy to see what I’ve been up to. Here’s my wrap-up of 2024 Wikipedia stuff I did.

– Uploaded 81 images to Wikimedia Commons (see them)
– Uploaded 15 images to Wikipedia (usually for obits, or logos, cases where the image doesn’t have a free license, see them)
– Wrote 33 articles (see them)
– Made 755 edits.

It was a decent year. My absolute favorite thing from the year was finding this “selfie” of M. M. Hazeltine (above). Hazeltine was a photographer born in Vermont in 1827. He went out West to seek his fortune, came back to Vermont, learned photography, and went back out there. This image from the 1850s was taken when he and his brother were working a gold claim in California. It was in UC Berkeley’s special collections and I think I found it through Calisphere. One of the weird things about a lot of public domain images is that stock photography organizations tend to scoop up images that are publicly marked as public domain, put their watermarks all over them and try to sell them to people. This is legally allowed, but because of the way search engines work, it can be tough to find the original public domain images. Having those images on Wikipedia helps.

I’m aware that Wikipedia is imperfect. However, it’s a nice hobby for someone into free culture and photography, as I am. This year’s work didn’t feel like too much bored (or grumpy) editing and a lot more “Hey this neat thing should be in there” so here’s to more neat things going in there in 2025.