The challenges facing today's libraries and librarians

September 15, 2017 2:52 PM

A fifty minute interview with Jessamyn, interviewed by Lauren Sergy. Topics include why Jessamyn went to library school, diversity, employment in the library sector, pay equality, technology, and other aspects of being a contemporary librarian.
posted by Wordshore to MetaFilter-Related at 2:52 PM (10 comments total)

Topics include why Jessamyn went to library school

I assumed it was a basic requirement so she could go library school seal team 6...
posted by biffa at 3:57 PM on September 15, 2017 [4 favorites]

This is why I am so deeply in like with Jessamyn. She enlightens me a little more every time I interact with her. She's a national treasure.
posted by pjern at 5:38 PM on September 15, 2017 [1 favorite]

MetaFilter: so deeply in like with Jessamyn.

:)
posted by Fizz at 6:29 AM on September 16, 2017 [4 favorites]

Jessamyn for president...oh, I'm not kidding.
posted by clavdivs at 1:03 PM on September 16, 2017 [1 favorite]

"Service + civics + your information need."

Fuckin' A!
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 8:44 PM on September 16, 2017 [1 favorite]

Super Awesome Librarian Jessamyn is the reason I have agreed -- for the THIRD time -- to stand in front of my Town Council and volunteer to be on the local library's Board of Directors.

(The first two times, some local pol's friend was voted in instead, even though the library director herself stood up and said my family was the biggest users of the library in town, and specifically asked for me. Each time she and I both went home disgusted. But whenever she has asked, I scowl, think of all those books and DVDs and museum passes, and the programs for kids & old people, and then I agree.)

So once again I will swallow my pride, think of how awesome libraries & librarians are, and step up to the podium at Town Hall in a few weeks and say that I want to give something back. And tis time I might wear the "Don't read the comments" wristband that Jessamyn gave me: who knows, it could be what I need!

Don't make me do this a fourth time, Celeste.
posted by wenestvedt at 10:26 AM on September 18, 2017 [5 favorites]

Good luck wenestvedt! I have to say, I was sort of like "Do marketing for the conference... ehhhhhh" but Lauren was a delight to talk with and what started out to be a 10-20 minute interview turned into what you saw here. I was having a good hair day and a good brain day and I am looking forward to talking about digital divide stuff in Edmonton. Anyone know if you can somehow extract YouTube closed captioning in lieu of paying a transcriptionist?
posted by jessamyn (retired) at 2:04 PM on September 18, 2017 [3 favorites]

I love the mighty youtube-dl, and of course it has a command line argument for this!

youtube-dl --all-subs --skip-download https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ye8mB6VsUHw

...with your video's URL swapped in.

(from https://superuser.com/questions/927523/how-to-download-only-subtitles-of-videos-using-youtube-dl)
posted by wenestvedt at 7:45 PM on September 18, 2017 [2 favorites]

Just for the record, I had to use a web site called downsub.com to generate the closed captions. (And the web site seemed kind of sketchy to me: beware.)

I am a n00b here, but it seems that when YouTube has to generate its own closed captions, it doesn't store them as an ordinary .srt file to be grabbed by, e.g., youtube-dl. However, the downsub.com web site can prompt YouTube to generate them on the fly and then also capture them. The resulting file is formatted as a line number, then a time code, then a FONT tag wrapped around some all-lower-case, homophone-riddled, best-effort transcription. :7)

But Something always beats Nothing!
posted by wenestvedt at 9:01 AM on September 20, 2017 [1 favorite]

I put up the transcript for people who would prefer to just read and not watch this talk.
posted by jessamyn (retired) at 10:37 AM on September 22, 2017 [5 favorites]