now this is a good framing of one tension at the heart of my work with library data!

si oppington@stillwellgray.ca · yesterday

"it takes out the human error" yes and replaces artisanal handcrafted human error with mechanical fucking up, at a scale and pace that she, apparently, simply cannot imagine.

We are so proud of the brilliant work of friends and contributors in this issue: thank you to all who brainstormed, peer reviewed, proofread, and helped us think through these #QueerBibliography subjects!

Edinburgh University Press Journals - Table of Contents - lih: Vol 42, No 2

euppublishing.com

Malcolm Noble@malcolmjnoble.bsky.social · yesterday

The first journal number from #QueerBibliography 2025 is available online, guest edited with the utterly brilliant @ewatson.bsky.social. Thanks to @jilld17.bsky.social and Nadine Kozak for making space so quickly, to anonymous reviewers, our authors, and for Fran Affleck's meticulous copy editing.

The first journal number from #QueerBibliography 2025 is available online, guest edited with the utterly brilliant @ewatson.bsky.social. Thanks to @jilld17.bsky.social and Nadine Kozak for making space so quickly, to anonymous reviewers, our authors, and for Fran Affleck's meticulous copy editing.

My timeline might be pleased to know that there's now a statue of Sylvia Townsend Warner on Dorchester's high street.

Friday afternoon catalogue data wrangling -- personally, I'm fond of "bookse;;er."

Do you use digitized medieval manuscripts in any capacity? Do you have opinions about the metadata that describes them? We want to hear from you! Please take a moment to fill out our very short survey. Please repost and share with anyone you know who might be interested! forms.gle/sBPXAnoRhwe1...

Digitized Medieval Manuscripts: Metadata Preferences

A brief survey about what metadata formats people prefer to go along with their digitized medieval manuscripts. The results of this survey will be used to consider what metadata we make available thro...

forms.gle

Reading articles on the amounts HE has spent in APCs over the last 5-10 years, and slowly watching my blood pressure rise. Millions upon millions, on something WE CAN ABSOLUTELY DO OURSELVES FOR A FRACTION OF THE COST - what universities couldn't do with that kind of money now... 😠 And breathe...

This is a great student-authored short piece about, in my read, how the allure of innovation/problem solving/bragging rights has led a lot of smart people to ignore the work of archivists and historians when developing historical, archive driven tools.

@dhnow.bsky.social · 2w ago

Editors’ Choice: The Archive is Not a Toy: The Hidden Problems of a ‘Vintage’ AI

every time you write overly defensively you should remember that you are pursuing a strategy of writing careful sentences specifically for people who demonstrably either won't or can't read them

BeijingPalmer@beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 2w ago

there is literally no amount of caveats or careful wording that will protect you from stupidity or bad faith, so you might as well say things straightforwardly and strongly to begin with.

👀 CfP: "Submissions are open for our two-day conference ‘What does a good digital society look like?’ on 10 & 11 June 2027, at Sheffield Hallam University, UK. Submit your abstract or proposal by 29 October 2026." Full Details: digitalgood.net/conference-2... @digitalgoodnet.bsky.social #DH

Conference: What does a good digital society look like? - ESRC Digital Good Network

Digital technologies should be good for people, societies and the planet, but there is ample evidence that they are often not. Social scientists, humanities scholars […]

digitalgood.net

We’re delighted to announce that Professor Leah Price has been appointed to the Professorship of Bibliography and Modern Book History.

Professor Leah Price appointed as Professor of Bibliography and Modern Book History

english.web.ox.ac.uk

📢 ATTN BOOK HISTORY PEOPLE 📚 Have you or a friend published an edited collection on a #BookHistory topic in 2026? A monograph? An exhibition catalogue? Yes?! Submit the citation information to have the work included in the SHARP 2026 Annual Bibliography. docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

SHARP 2026 Annual Bibliography

This form is for collecting citation information for 2026 edited collections, monographs, and exhibitions catalogs. They should be: Published in 2026 Any language Any topic in book history We encoura...

docs.google.com

In things I wish I hadn't seen, but now I have and you will too... New research published in the Journal of the Institute of Conservation recommends PPE for handling all red rot because of the risk of heavy metal contamination (lead, arsenic, cadmium). #GLAMS 📚 www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

I see there's an alarmist press release being uncritically reproduced by media outlets about the scary autonomous capabilities of AI tools just a day after reporting about the huge financial losses of the companies that own these tools again it is almost as if this a pattern that repeats itself

Took the survey this morning. Short and to the point. BHL is probably my third most visited site for research after POWO and archive.org

Biodiversity Heritage Library@biodivlibrary.bsky.social · 3w ago

Help shape the future of BHL 🌱 As we begin to modernise the BHL platform, we’re inviting BHL users to share their experiences through a 3–5 minute survey. Your responses will directly inform our priorities, identify problems, guide improvements, and shape a better BHL experience: bit.ly/4fpc75D 🧪

Do you have an idea for a case study on early Hebrew printed books that connects with the Footprints project? Apply to be part of a collaborative research and writing project. drive.google.com/file/d/1jG8h... #JewishStudies #Bookhistory

"Lost" manuscript which is cataloged, digitized, and available for anyone to read just sitting around on the open internet: archives.yale.edu/repositories...

Colleen T@librarycolleen.bsky.social · 3w ago

Lost, “unpublished and forgotten in a U.S. archive.” Uff. Here is a particularly egregious “discovery” trope about publishing a previously preserved and described item from the Beinecke. The item sounds exciting but, ugh. www.theguardian.com/books/2026/j...

Jesus. 35 UK universities quietly- without debate - joined the Ministry of Defence’s “Battlefield Alliance” which seeks to “reorientate academia towards Defence and National Security” They’re destroying the social sciences and humanities while militarising the institutions

Amidst all the well-deserved commendation of Mamdani’s public interest tech crews, I hope we’ll also acknwldg the folks who’ve been advocating for + doing this work (eg, @beta.nyc, the municipal service design teams, the build-your-own-tools advocates, etc) for decades + were ahead of their time.

Reminder that's it's free to request your local library purchase a copy! I've just submitted requests to both my academic and public library. Looking forward to reading it!

Roopika Risam@roopikarisam.bsky.social · 3mo ago

DATA EMPIRE is on NPR's list! "A book that promises not to just show how empires have collected and weaponized data over the ages, but also how we can resist, is an easy must-read for me." wnyc.org/npr/nx-s1-58... Pre-order: N. America: tinyurl.com/DataEmpireUS Elsewhere: tinyurl.com/DataEmpireUK

U.S. publication day for what promises to be a fantastically smart and cool book!

Roopika Risam@roopikarisam.bsky.social · 3mo ago

DATA EMPIRE is on NPR's list! "A book that promises not to just show how empires have collected and weaponized data over the ages, but also how we can resist, is an easy must-read for me." wnyc.org/npr/nx-s1-58... Pre-order: N. America: tinyurl.com/DataEmpireUS Elsewhere: tinyurl.com/DataEmpireUK

Hey, I have these postcards of my book's cover (by Vera Villanueva for Yale UP). I'd love to mail you one. Will you send me a screenshot of 1) your pre-order OR 2) your (free!!) request that your library purchase the book? And of course an address to mail it to.

If you're a library metadata and/or cataloging type, please consider following the new account for Cataloging & Classification Quarterly (CCQ) @catclassquarterly.bsky.social. 📚 (It's me running the account!)

And let's say it together: Digitization isn't preservation. It can be *part of* a preservation plan, but then, there's the long-term digital preservation plan on top of that, for starters...

Beth DeBold@elizaaudacis.bsky.social · 3w ago

To the inevitable cries of “just digitize everything, then;” not an answer. Making digital facsimiles accessible requires huge investment: staff, metadata, preservation. Orgs are currently not funded to meet these needs. While digital objects are great, they’ll never replace looking at originals.

Descriptive bibliography question for those who know more about the 18th century than I do: the book below is large and has a lot of plates, and seems based on signatures to be a folio in 2s. Is this a thing? I am used to seeing them in 6s. The binding is such that I can't ascertain directly.

Megan L. Cook@meganlcook.bsky.social · 3w ago

I don't choose the preposterously large books, the preposterously large books choose me. (In all fairness, the preposterously large book is resting on foam supports that tilt it towards the camera but it is still, I assure you, very very large)

“This is especially true when museums are sitting on a trove of specialist knowledge — data — that is a font of untapped revenue.” Revenue for whom and to what end, of course, but also, is data “specialist knowledge”? This collapses fulsome object and data management to the data-fiable parts.

Catherine Fletcher@catherinefletcher.info · 4w ago

not so much throwing museums a lifeline as massively exaggerating the biases in the sources, if the cited case at Leighton House is anything to go by

not so much throwing museums a lifeline as massively exaggerating the biases in the sources, if the cited case at Leighton House is anything to go by

AI companies are throwing museums a lifeline. What do they want in return?

Touted as a way to engage visitors and boost funding, new tools are triggering concerns around trust and ethics

ft.com

🔥 on the worst case scenario for AI content in museums: 'If no actual human wrote it, no human edited it, no human signed off on it, then what right does it have to tell me, a human, anything about my and our collective human history, art or culture?'

Catherine Fletcher@catherinefletcher.info · 4w ago

not so much throwing museums a lifeline as massively exaggerating the biases in the sources, if the cited case at Leighton House is anything to go by

Amnesty International put out a major report documenting the influence of UK based anti trans gender critical organizations and their funding. Within hours, GC groups threatened defamation lawsuits and Amnesty was forced to pull it down. Proving the point they're anti rights. Anyways, here it is.

As an archive we're open to professional historians, casual historians, and competitive ranked historians.