The Library is Open ByWater Solutions

We are pleased to announce our newest session of The Library is Open Podcast! This session features an interview with Justin Hoenke. Justin is the Team Leader: Libraries & Community Spaces at Wellington City Council in New Zealand. Justin and Jessie talk about libraries, communities and most importantly kindness. 
Justin is a community focused librarian & manager who believes that when we all respect each other, work together, and have honest communication that we can accomplish the most amazing things. At the Libraries & Community Spaces at Wellington City Council in New Zealand he provides strategic direction and leadership for 2 public libraries and 4 community centers. Justin is also the author of a a regular column titled A DAY IN THE LIFE for INFORMATION TODAY magazine. This 9 times/year column is focused on speaking with librarians and others in the information management profession about trends, inspiration, technology, management, and more.

We are pleased to announce our newest session of The Library is Open Podcast! This session features an interview with Mark Noble, Aspen Discovery Team Lead at ByWater Solutions. Mark and Jessie talk about the future of open-source discovery, the global community and what’s on the roadmap for Aspen Discovery in this episode!




About Mark Noble

Mark graduated with a degree in Architectural Engineering, but moved immediately into software development. More than half his career has been spent building software for libraries with the majority of the time spent working on Discovery software. He enjoys creating innovative new functionality to make library software work better for patrons and staff. In his spare time, Mark enjoys being outdoors running and hiking, traveling, and hanging out with his kids.


About Aspen Discovery

Aspen is a full-featured Discovery System that integrates with e-content and other 3rd party providers, giving your patrons comprehensive access to all of your materials in one place. Aspen combines your library catalog with e-content, digital archives and enrichment from all major third-party providers, improves relevancy and ease of use, provides native reading recommendations, displays all formats of titles within one result (FRBR) and much more. Aspen was created to give users an improved experience over other Discovery systems with less of an impact on library budgets.


Learn more about Aspen Discovery.

We are pleased to announce our newest session of The Library is Open Podcast! This session features an interview with Angie Drobnic Holan, editor-in-chief at PolitiFact. Angie and Jessie talk about misinformation, tools to organize and keep accurate records, partnerships to help stop the spread of misinformation online, and educating people to distinguish between truth and rumors.




About Angie Drobnic Holan

Angie has extensive experience fact-checking the presidency, Congress and political campaigns, and was a reporter on the PolitiFact team that won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting. She serves on the advisory board of the International Fact-Checking Network.


She holds a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University and a master’s of library science from the University of South Florida. Her undergraduate degree is from the Plan II liberal arts program at the University of Texas at Austin. She is a native of Louisiana and attended the Louisiana School for Math, Science and the Arts.


Read more about Angie on the Politifact site.


About Politifact

Fact-checking journalism is the heart of PolitiFact. Their core principles are independence, transparency, fairness, thorough reporting and clear writing. The reason they publish is to give citizens the information they need to govern themselves in a democracy.


Read more about Politifact.

We are pleased to announce our newest session of The Library is Open Podcast! This session features an interview with JP Porcaro, Director, Free Public Library & Cultural Center of Bayonne. JP and Jessie talk about everything libraries, lifelong learning, communities, and just why libraries are the cornerstone of a child’s learning process.




About JP Porcaro
JP was an American Library Association Presidential Candidate in 2016-2017 and serves as an EveryLibrary Senior Advisor.


Follow JP on Twiiter


About the Bayonne Public Library
The Bayonne Public Library is the free public library of Bayonne, New Jersey. Incorporated in 1890, it serves a population of approximately 62,000. Read more at Bayonne Public Library


The New Jersey Library Construction Bond Actpassed both the Assembly and the Senate unanimously on November 16, 2020. It was then signed by the Governor on November 20, 2020.

We are pleased to announce our newest session of The Library is Open Podcast! This session features an interview with R. David Lankes, he is the director of the University of South Carolina’s School of Information Science, and recipient of the American Library Association’s 2016 Ken Haycock Award for Promoting Librarianship.




About R. David Lankes

R. David Lankes is a professor and the director of the University of South Carolina’s School of Information Science. Lankes has always been interested in combining theory and practice to create active research projects that make a difference. His work has been funded by organizations such as The MacArthur Foundation, The Institute for Library and Museum Services, NASA, The U.S. Department of Education, The U.S. Department of Defense, The National Science Foundation, The U.S. State Department, and The American Library Association.


Lankes is a passionate advocate for libraries and their essential role in today’s society earning him the American Library Association’s Ken Haycock Award for Promoting Librarianship in 2016. He also seeks to understand how information approaches and technologies can be used to transform industries. In this capacity he has served on advisory boards and study teams in the fields of libraries, telecommunications, education, and transportation including at the National Academies. He has been a visiting fellow at the National Library of Canada, The Harvard School of Education, and was the first fellow of ALA’s Office for Information Technology Policy. His book,The Atlas of New Librarianship won the 2012 ABC-CLIO/Greenwood Award for the Best Book in Library Literature.


Read more about David on his website!

We are pleased to announce our newest session of The Library is Open Podcast! This session features an interview with Jessamyn West, a librarian and community technologist living in central Vermont. Jessamyn returns to the Library is Open Podcast to chat about how librarians are adapting during the pandemic, tools she uses to help with technology needs in her community, what skills librarians need to adapt to the environment we are currently living in, and finding your personal center.


What’s Jessamyn Reading


A Place for Everything: The Curious History of Alphabetical Order by Judith Flanders


Ancestral Night (White Space # 1) by Elizabeth Bear


What’s Jessamyn Listening to


QI Podcast


About Jessamyn West

Jessamyn Charity West is a library technologist and writer known for her activism and work on the digital divide.


Checkout her blog librarian.net putting the rarin back in librarian since 1999.


Read more about Jessamyn on her website!