Congrats to all those who nurtured this incredible network. I was a HASTAC scholar in 2009. It gave me the courage to pursue the kind of scholarship *I* wanted to when everything/everyone else in grad school told me not to. I try to carry that forward. HASTAC might be gone, but the flame stays lit.

Cathy Davidson@cathyndavidson.bsky.social · 3d ago

Today, we announced that HASTAC is closing as an interactive social network after 25+ years of innovative, exciting, and equitable learning, scholarship, and community focusing on technology and its impact on society. educational-cultural-institutions.hastac.hcommons.org/2026/09/29/s...

Putting out a #bookhistory bat signal: does anyone have any resources on the history+production of ink balls/ball leathers? Finding it difficult to locate sources on preparing sheepskin for non-leather, non-parchment purposes…

At the MoMA today for THE SURREALIST BOOK, a fabulous new exhibit by Jodi Hauptman & Starr Figura. Ft. artists' books from the Zell collection, spanning surrealism to the present. I wrote the catalogue's epilogue on artsy bookmaking & "new" media. It was fun. Come see these gorgeous books.

The Surrealist Book: Tomorrow Lives in Mirrors | MoMA

Exhibition. Oct 4, 2026–Jan 23, 2027. A book bound with shards of shattered glass. A manifesto enshrined in polished metal. Love poems seamlessly merging with solarized photographs. For artists and wr...

moma.org

CFP: Generative Digital Humanities, a volume on AI and DH in the long-running Minnesota Debates in DH book series. To be co-edited by @zentralwerkstatt.org, @laurenfklein.bsky.social, @lnakamura.bsky.social, and myself. Deadline Nov. 1. Please share widely! dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/page/cfp-gen...

CFP: Generative Digital Humanities | Debates in the Digital Humanities

Transforming scholarly publications into living digital works

dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu

Why did everyone rag so hard on participation trophies, my 5yo just brought one home and I'm proud as punch. Not because I don't believe in academic achievement (duh), but because it awarded a v small thing he actually *has* been working hard on, and I could tell he appreciated it being recognized.

ImPRESSed Yet? I am thrilled to announce that Impressive Textiles: Premodern Printing on Fabric will be published October 27 in print and Open Access with @acmrs.bsky.social, thanks to 30 textile and print scholars, and 1 groundbreaking exhibition @newberrylibrary.bsky.social! #CoverReveal 1/5

my book is out now 🫶 💗 $18 with coupon code E26CNTNT enjoy!!!??? :)

Content Machines: Reading and Writing in the Platform Era

dukeupress.edu

In the 1860s, chess player Howard Staunton produced a photo-facsimile of Shakespeare's First Folio. It was one of the earliest attempts to use new technology to reproduce an old book. @folger.edu has Staunton’s proof sheets. I looked at them last week. If you like media/books/history, they're fun.

“How on earth came the t turned into s?!!!!”

On Howard Staunton’s photozincographic facsimile of Shakespeare’s First Folio

whitneytrettien.substack.com

If you are in or around Philly, come hear me talk about the work I'm doing at @sims-mss.bsky.social , inspired by #DHMakes! Free lunch! Don't miss it - next week at @pricelab.bsky.social on Tuesday, 12pm-1:30pm. pricelab.sas.upenn.edu/events/dot-p...

In an essay from 1950, Norbert Weiner describes a guy who buys a player piano. It's clear he doesn't care about music, he's only interested in the mechanics of the thing. For Weiner, this is the difference between KNOW-HOW (technical skill) and KNOW-WHAT (how to use tech for human flourishing).

I profiled the startup behind Pangram, the AI detector everyone’s talking about. It works really, really well. I wanted to understand how they did it. and also: why people still don’t trust them. (also, news: Penguin Random House is using it.) gift link! ✨

The World’s Most Reliable AI Detector Has a Human Problem

Armed with a near-perfect detection tool, Pangram is fighting to convince the public AI cheating can be caught.

bloomberg.com

Some nice #fragment news here:

Girton College, University of Cambridge@girtoncollege.bsky.social · 2w ago

📚 A medieval mystery solved nearly a century later. Girton Fellow Dr James Wade and Dr Katie Walter of @sussex.ac.uk have reunited six lost pages of a medieval bestseller with its manuscript, now held 3,500 miles away at Yale. Read the full story: 🔎 🔗 www.girton.cam.ac.uk/news/reunite...

fascinated by this next layer of abstraction, where the text becomes something else entirely, a substrate where its historical and geographic idiosyncrasies can become a problem (or opportunity), and wonder how it might change, or is already changing, how we talk about digitization

It's a contrast to the first few decades of digitization, where the point of digitization was initially conceived as preserving and disseminating books themselves in a new form. Digitization also made it possible to extract information *from* them new ways, including for scholars. I find myself +

I can’t stop thinking about Anthropic’s destructive book scanning. Obviously, it’s gross. People love books. Destroying books makes people mad. Even books they don't actually care about. AI companies know this, that’s why they try to keep their weird behavior a dirty little secret.

Lois Burke —formerly at Tilburg University, now at the University of Stirling— is making her pitch for the usefulness of manuscript magazines. There is for instance "The Sunbeam Magazine" (1866), edited by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894)... collections.library.yale.edu/catalog/1067... #BAVS2026

New from 404 Media: a company is selling tons of old books specifically to AI companies and says they have a strong NDA to never reveal which AI company bought all of the books. They don't want headlines of 'we scanned and destroyed millions of books for AI' www.404media.co/ai-companies...

AI Companies Are Buying Tons of Old Books Because They're Free of AI Slop

ISBNdb, a company that sources printed books for AI companies to turn into training data, tells clients “the optics problem is real.”

404media.co

I love the sentiment and agree with it! But this is a very temperate zone perspective. The tropics are another manner. As someone born and raised in Puerto Rico, maintaining my book collection was a constant battle against mold, flying termites, humidity (book covers stick together), and so on.

max koss 🦩@maxkoss.com · 3mo ago

The nice things about books: once you own them, you own them, forever. No one will be eye tracking your reading habits. No one will make money of you reading the book as many times as you'd like. And the very same book can be read by generations to come. It can last centuries, literally. It's great.

For the last section of Critical Infrastructure Studies & DH on “Reenvisioning DH Infrastructure” (beginning with Ch 14) we sought briefer pieces that are speculative, creative, or playful, including through visual & interactive means. dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/read/critica... @uminnpress.bsky.social

Mid-Atlantic DH folks, what are you doing June 24-26? We hope you'll join us at Penn for the free in-person @ach.bsky.social Regional Hub for #ACH2026, featuring watch parties, a Happy Hour, Lightning Talks, a #DHMakes space, a sticker exchange & more! RSVP at www.library.upenn.edu/events/ach-2....

We wrapped up Dream Lab 2026 yesterday 🌩️ Thank you to all our instructors, participants, and collaborators—what a week!

In my personal non-work time, I wrote about public libraries as public spaces, and their connection to civic life. Thanks to the William Penn Foundation for giving me the opportunity. williampennfoundation.org/news/public-...

It's hard to believe AGI is imminent when we here in academia are still scheduling moderately sized meetings by reply-all email chains.

I’m thrilled to share the new issue of Taper 16: For Good Measure. In this issue, we’ve published 21 tiny (<2048 bytes) computational works. Explore, share, and enjoy! taper.badquar.to/16/ Relevant tags: #elit #DH #poetry #creativecoding #art #literature

So excited to kick off ✨Newberry FragmentFest 2026✨ today with Otto Ege and Megan Kelly 😍🥰🤩 Program (with actual event title): www.newberry.org/calendar/pre... @newberrylibrary.bsky.social #medievalsky #fragments #fragmentology

next up is this incredible small, black book by Mindy Seu the size of a smartphone that turns Instagram Stories (which evolved into a live lecture-performance) into a performance script. it is a deeply moving, feminist account of the early Web that includes some painfully pointed moments 1/2

Library chain! From the Laurentian Library! Collected by hardware magnate Henry Probasco, now at the @newberrylibrary.bsky.social. (Paging @shannonmattern.bsky.social)

#DHMakes: Prof Kate Nartker recreates textiles from weave drafts in an 18th century commonplace book (Folger MS V.a.540) www.folger.edu/blogs/collat...

Drafting Narratives: Weaving, Sequence, and Story in the Folger Library Archive | Folger Shakespeare Library

Folger Shakespeare Library is the world's largest Shakespeare collection, the ultimate resource for exploring Shakespeare and his world. Shakespeare belongs to you. His world is vast. Come explore. Jo...

folger.edu