Her qualifying work for the Internet

[Nayon1]

In her work, Jessamyn West is driven by a desire to help people and remove barriers to access.

“When I went to library school, I realized a lot of the things that were important to me lined up with library values,” West said. “Anti-censorship, intellectual freedom, and serving all the people — not just the people who can afford it, not just the people who can make it up two flights of stairs, not just people who can read small print. All the people.”

West is living out her values, processing requests from individuals to participate in the Internet Archive’s program for users with print disabilities. She receives emails from people around the world with blindness, low-vision, dyslexia, brain injuries and other cognition problems who need accessible content. In her role, West has helped qualify thousands accurate cleaned numbers list from frist database of patrons to receive materials in alternative digital formats.

Archive is among a variety of activities that keeps West busy with the Vermont Mutual Aid Society. West works part-time at the Kimball Library in Randolph, Vermont, where she helps adults in her community learn to use technology. She also does public speaking on the digital divide and other technology access issues, as well as writes a monthly column for Computers in Libraries Magazine.

“All I want to do is to get as much knowledge, to the most people, in as easy a way as possible.”

Jessamyn West, Vermont Mutual Aid Society
West grew up in Boxborough, Massachusetts, where she learned about computers from her dad and her mother introduced her to the importance of civic engagement and volunteerism. At Hampshire College, she earned a bachelor’s degree in linguistics and then moved to Seattle.

In 1994, West enrolled in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS) at the University of Washington. The shift to online information and the emergence of the web was presenting an opportunity and a challenge for libraries, which West said was exciting to be a part of at the time.
Safety Bill” seeks to censor “legal but harmful content” in a way that would threaten open digital spaces. And in the USA, content filtering is once again being floated as the answer to online copyright infringement, this time via the “SMART Copyright Act of 2022“.
In the past few weeks, governments around the world have renewed their efforts to restrain free expression online. In Canada, a revised “Online Streaming Act” comes as the latest in a long-running attempt to bring streaming under a restrictive regulatory regime. In the UK, a new “Online