ALA’s Captionist Patricia Graves
January 26th, 2006 by Rochelle Hartman
Many of you have probably been at an ALA program that was being live-captioned. I’m someone who tends to look at the captioning screen, rather than the people talking, and have made great sport of mis-captioned material. I hadn’t given much thought to the person who was doing the captioning, even though she is always introduced at the start of every meeting where she’s present.
It was ALA keynote speaker and now, ALA outlaw, Andrei Codrescu, who made the captionist, Patricia Graves, real to me. He was so impressed with her work that he introduced himself after the President’s Program and asked about her work. Graves told Andrei that she’d had several hand surgeries, one in recent weeks, and said that people in her line of work have a limited work-life.
So, during a break at ALA’s Council III, I introduced myself to Patricia and asked her about her work, and thanked her. It was so nice to meet her and attach her very difficult and much-appreciated work to a lovely, hard-working person.
Tags: ALAMidwinter2006, conferences
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January 27th, 2006 at 6:32 pm
Pat has been captioning ALA stuff for a number of years, and generally does a great job. She also transcribes (we don’t see it on a screen) the Executive Board meetings. I’m not sure it makes doing minutes easier, but I am constantly pushing my EB colleagues to talk into the mic so that Pat can capture thier comments.
Pat was very frustrated by the President’s Program. Michael Gorman has an extesive vocabulary, and Pat is justifiably proud that he did not trip her up with “rapt.” On the other hand Andrei’s speech was tough, especially the middle European names.
Pat takes great pride in her work, and the one time I used the native name for a place, I gave it to her in advance — and she posted it to the screen.
Pat mentioned to me that she is on her profession’s group which develops the certification tests for transcribers, and was goint to add the homonym rapt/wrapped. As librarians, our extensive vocabulary is a challenge for her (but one she seems to enjoy).
Thanks for noticing Rochelle!