(Jessamyn is a smart, insightful person on information technology issues. Her ideas are well worth exploring.   – promoted by jvwalt)

For those of you needing introduction to Jessamyn West, let me start by offering links explaining how she came to be dubbed an internet folk hero.

With her professional blog librarian.net and her personal blog jessamyn.com, she spans a wide range of topics of interest concerning technology, information access, and life in central Vermont. She frequently travels to discuss the digital divide and her book Without a Net: Librarians Bridging the Digital Divide was published last summer. Randolph is lucky she lives here and I was thrilled she was able to trek up to the ORCA studio in Montpelier for this interview.  

Hear Jessamyn explain the factors that put Vermont in a “technological shadow.”

Watch as she obliterates the argument that the internet has made libraries obsolete.

Learn librarian terms like “recall” and “relevance.”

Marvel as she uses a drug war analogy to explain SOPA and PROTECT IP.

We also got to discuss Wikipedia and her work on the Advisory Board of the Wikimedia Foundation. And last was an inspiring discussion about the Occupy Libraries in places like New York and Boston, which sprung out of the Radical Reference movement.

So check out her work online and in print if you are looking for lots of fun with a depth of insight concerning the potentialities in our future. Her writing is both well-informed and punchy and I was glad we were able to capture some of that special combination in this interview.