"but as the map recursively improves, eventually it becomes..." *clicks to final slide in the pitch deck* "...the territory!"

If you genuinely believe that libraries negatively impact book sales, I don't even know what to say to you.

Until recently, I'd been imagining (hoping) that librarians had left CRAAP behind for good. This paper is very interesting. For me, the conceptual inadequacy of CRAAP is a deal-breaker, end of. But Caitlin argues that more than anything, it's the one-shot format that fails us.

LOEX@loex.bsky.social · 3d ago

"Teaching Source Evaluation to Undergraduate Nursing Students: Comparing the CRAAP Test and the Source + Beyond the Source Framework" by Caitlin Ratcliffe (C&RL) crl.acrl.org/index.php/cr...

From journal editing experience, LLMs appear to be *undoing* the good research of non-English speaking scholars. You can see signs of a solid study in a manuscript that chat or claude et al - used for "editing only" - have otherwise *wrecked*. I keep suggesting they try again without AI "editing."

Simon Davies@simonfd.bsky.social · 3w ago

People will complain about the deadening effect 'AI' has on writing, then a few sentences later say that it has potential to help non-English speakers publish their work in English. It can't be both. Yes, it will put their work into English, but it will be bland, plagiarised slop English.

Remember when Aaron Swartz was facing 13 federal felony counts and up to 35 years in prison for downloading journal articles and consequently took his own life?

Courtney Milan@courtneymilan.com · 2w ago

If anyone wants to know why the Anthropic settlement came so quickly and why everything else seems to take forever, the answer is because Anthropic co-founder Benjamin Mann was personally torrenting books and directing employees to do so.

They’ll keep telling us it’s inevitable but NYC and other large school systems are starting to say no to AI, recognizing it’s not a legitimate tool for k-12 learning. Even some universities are putting their foot down, like U Chicago (and some law schools) www.nyc.gov/mayors-offic...

Mayor Mamdani and Chancellor Samuels Put Students First with Nation’s Broadest Generative AI Moratorium in Schools

nyc.gov

I love how Werner Herzog is ALWAYS like this:

I published a weeding explainer a couple of years ago, with @lisagiven.bsky.social. Remember, "weeding a book is not censoring a book." Feel free to share if it helps. theconversation.com/librarians-h...

Librarians have good reasons to ‘weed’ books from their shelves. Why is book removal so controversial?

Yes, books are at the heart of libraries. However, books are not the only things that matter in libraries.

theconversation.com

carolyn@papersquared.bsky.social · 3w ago

Libraries tossing out weeded titles is not a travesty. 🧵 1. libraries MUST weed. We don't have magic shelves with unlimited space. 2. we do try to find alternatives to recycling. Book sales, free tables, and places like Better World Books get the majority of weeded titles. 1/3

Of all the academic freedom challenges available to choose from in the year of our lord 2026, imagine being the 100s of people who say, right, let’s go with debunked 19th c. race science as retold by a philosopher.

Jonathan W. Gray@elmcitytree.blacksky.app · 4w ago

There’s a petition signed by more than one hundred academics (& counting!) in support of Nathan Cofnas—the racist who instigated the pile on that led to J. Arday’s death—because he lost his postdoc. Apparently there’s nothing a white man can do that deserves consequences.

Librarian here to add that policing the definition of reading is verrrry passé.

Aparna Nair@disabilitystor1.bsky.social · last mo.

I am indeed a professor. I read ugh, theory. I read a lot of history; articles and books. Its because the stuff I read for work is so dark, and intense that I need something to change the gears. So hell yes, I read absolutely trashy romance novels, and I read smut. We can do it all, I believe.

(But first: please do work out a sustainability model and a transition of power/governance system, learn about digital preservation and ensure you have policies in place, and get advice from others who have gone before.

Philippe Bocquier@phbocquier.bsky.social · last mo.

I am telling you, academics: just reclaim your journals, don't wait commercial publishers to kick you out, they are just here for 30%+ profit, feeding on public money. (Re-)start your own Diamond Open Access journal.

more places should have artists-in-residence. like there should be a residency where you live on a particular train for a month. there should be an oil rig residency, an arctic research station residency. maybe a residency at a zoo

Nothing says quality research like SEOmaxxing for the bots.

Times Higher Education (THE)@timeshighered.bsky.social · last mo.

If you want the robots and #LLMs to find your scholarly publications, you need to make your outputs legible, connected and repeatedly encountered: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/how-make-your-academic-work-visible-ai #AI Highered #Academicsky

Related reading re agnotology and cognitive surrender (different field, same base concept): papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Aparna Nair@disabilitystor1.bsky.social · 2mo ago

"History involves sorting and organizing hundreds of thousands of facts" I remain astounded by how loud and wrong people are about what history actually is.

This is fantastic news. Congratulations all and looking forward to following your work!

Laura J. Smart@ljsmart.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Remember how we're mad as hell & not going to take it anymore so we're repatriating our Canadian union catalogue #metadata? SSHRC thinks it's worth $89,829 CAD over two years to pursue. FAFO. Elbows up. EDIDA baked in ftw. Kudos to our kind & fearless leader @brimwats.com & the amazing team.

"don't cite what you haven't read" remains the basic entry level academic responsibility; & if your discpline "doesn't have that as a norm" then sorry, your discipline needs reforming for this new world. Citations are structural parts of trust and knowledge building, not trinkets or optional extras

the beggars out of here getter@milesklee.bsky.social · 9mo ago

Academics and technologists are sounding the alarm about a growing crisis in scholarship as we know it: AI-generated citations of nonexistent papers that have infested real journals. Despite being fake, the sources are widely assumed to be authentic the more they appear in published literature.

It's fine to be sceptical about the ability of AI but you have to admit it's really good at adding a ton of busywork to the already stretched academic publishing system.

Ben Williamson@benpatrickwill.bsky.social · 2mo ago

The anatomy of an AI-supported academic article is becoming more apparent. I desk reviewed ~70 manuscripts this week for our journal. Reckon 20ish had significant AI assistance. On top of hundreds of others recently I'm starting to see patterns. Are other editors are seeing the same or similar? 1/

The anatomy of an AI-supported academic article is becoming more apparent. I desk reviewed ~70 manuscripts this week for our journal. Reckon 20ish had significant AI assistance. On top of hundreds of others recently I'm starting to see patterns. Are other editors are seeing the same or similar? 1/

This is the weirdest request for input that I've seen in a while. It's almost like the ACM is sitting at the table with the "change my mind" sign. So, let's do it. Short thread with the input I gave them:

Association for Computing Machinery@acm.org · 2mo ago

If you would like to share your thoughts, please use this link (buff.ly/fnANR1x). ACM leadership will take your feedback into account while we develop and implement our AI content strategy over the coming months.

Raffi you’re so right

I'm so happy to share this paper, wonderful work by Jess Wilson (now in a PhD @deakinuniversity.bsky.social). Congrats Jess and @danachatter.bsky.social! 🎉 Jess's study is significant in how it complicates dominant assumptions in two literatures: tech and psychology. doi.org/10.1080/0144...

Too much of a good thing? Exploring experiences of obsession with self-monitoring technology

Self-monitoring technology (SMT) – smartphone apps and wearable devices used to monitor bodily functions and activities – are becoming increasingly ubiquitous. SMTs are promoted for encouraging hea...

doi.org

“We don’t serve your country, don’t serve your king… We carry in our hearts the true country; and that cannot be stolen” (soundtrack for the midweek dance party; youtu.be/qkYLmuxXmE0)

evergreen

Matthew Noe@noethematt.bsky.social · 3y ago

The library being "the last real third space" isn't a reason to keep adding new responsibilities to the library; it is a reason to create more third spaces.

📢 Once more for the people in the back: - Most [more than 95%] of archives have not been digitized. - Most of humanity's knowledge and memory is *not* reachable by LLMs. - Believing that AI can provid you with comprehensive, definitive, "intelligent" results is folly.

Jesse Locker@jessemlocker.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Giving myself a headache in the archives

Academics so love you to read their stuff you could probably get them to pay you $35 instead

Dr David S Anderson@dsaarchaeology.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Please consider not saying that some AI models or some statistical models are good, useful, beneficial, whatever else positive, in science if it's not your research area. It's ok not to know things. It's ok not to both side things. It's ok to ask colleagues who are experts.

Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ@olivia.science · 4mo ago

If you're anti AI & making claims that some of the models under the AI umbrella are ok because they seem to be serving scientific goals, then you fell for a type of hype. One from the 2010s; stats models aren't blessed by their use in science and they can erode our thinking. bsky.app/profile/oliv...

Oh no. No no no no. GenAI is absolutely NOT about access to information. It is about despoiling our information ecosystem. And the text extruded from chatbots is absolutely NOT expression, since no one is expressing themselves there.

Tech Policy Press@techpolicypress.bsky.social · 3mo ago

AI systems are "at their core, a technology of expression and access to information,” writes Isabelle Anzabi. How governments govern the technology will shape what people can say, seek, and know—and the UN Global Dialogue on AI Governance in Geneva is where Anzabi says the world can get that right.

Ask how many more shifts they’d let a surgeon work after a week in which they severely harmed 12-15% of their patients

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 3mo ago

“In a recent study looking at the use of AI in healthcare, researchers from Stanford and Harvard found even top-performing AI models from Anthropic and Google produced 12 to 15 severely harmful errors per 100 cases. The worst-performing models made mistakes in 40 out of 100 cases.”