Tag Archives: Giovanni Damiola

Video and Transcripts From Aaron Swartz Day 2015

Please donate to my Kickstarter for “From DeadDrop to SecureDrop” – Thanks!!

Index of Speakers and Direct Links to Video and Transcriptions

Giovanni Damiola (Open Library Project)
YouTubeVideo – Transcript

Garrett Robinson (Lead Programmer, SecureDrop)
YouTubeVideoTranscript

Alison Macrina (Founder and Director, Library Freedom Project)
YouTubeVideoTranscript

Brewster Kahle (Digital Librarian, Internet Archive)
YouTubeVideoTranscript

Cindy Cohn (Executive Director, Electronic Frontier Foundation)
YouTubeVideoTranscript

Jacob Appelbaum (Security Expert seen in Citizen Four, Wikileaks volunteer) (Appearing remotely via Jitsi)
YouTubeVideoTranscript Internet Archive Video & Download

Roger Dingledine (Interim Executive Director, Tor Project)
YouTubeVideoTranscript

Micah Lee (Co-founder, Freedom of the Press Foundation and Technologist at “The Intercept”)
YouTubeVideo – Transcript Internet Archive Video & Download

A Special Statement from Chelsea Manning: “The Human Element”
(Read by Lisa Rein)
YouTubeVideoTranscript – Link to Chelsea’s Statement

 

Aaron’s Open Library Project Lives On

Giovanni Damiola has just been added as a speaker for Saturday’s Celebration of Hackers and Whistleblowers. He will say a few words about how he and Jessamyn West have been working on the Open Library project this past year. The Open Library was one of Aaron’s first projects, right after Creative Commons.

Giovanni was a hacker at last year’s San Francisco Aaron Swartz Day
Hackathon. He ended up getting a job at the Internet Archive shortly after last year’s event, and has now taken on Aaron’s beloved Open Library project, which attempts to create “a page for every book” in existence. Giovanni revamped the site to be more stable, and a re-index found 500,000 books, authors and editions lying around. Here’s an up to date “status report on the project from Librarian Jessamyn West. It’s also a project you can hack on at the hackathon this weekend.

The Open Library lends books to people in countries with no public libraries, and Jessamyn  frequently uses Google translate just to read and reply to email from all over the world.

Although originally envisioned by Aaron as providing, “a page for every book, so you can find the book, so you can buy it, or borrow it,  it’s become much more than that, and is, in fact,  a lifeline to information for many countries.

As Jessamyn explains, “I was around when Open Library was first getting started, and I think the people who built it and designed it were way ahead of their time. I’m really happy to get to carry-on Aaron’s legacy of sharing as much as possible to as many people as possible.”