The British Library’s plan to repurpose some of its reading rooms as paid-for workspaces has sparked concern among researchers. @francesjones.bsky.social reports

British Library to turn reading rooms into paid-for workspaces

Areas dedicated to science and social science in national institution to be ‘repurposed’, sparking the ire of scholars

timeshighereducation.com

The call for papers for the 13th Congress of the European Association for Jewish Studies (15-17 July 2027) is now online: Deadline for paper proposals: 15 December 2026 www.eurojewishstudies.org/homepage-ann...

New on ACRLog... You Can't Ask the Librarian You Don't Know Exists: Outreach Experiments "As a first-year academic librarian serving as the sole instruction and reference liaison to my institution’s business school, I’ve been thinking a lot about different forms of capital..." bit.ly/4B9YOjj

As a person obsessed with the ways Google no longer works, I enjoyed this sancho.bearblog.dev/google-weird...

When did Google get so f-ing weird?

I recently had an experience while doing a simple Google search that was so profoundly weird that it stopped me in my tracks. Understanding this Google se...

sancho.bearblog.dev

'I now sense that creative hallucination is fundamental to [AI chatbot technology] design. It is, after all, called “generative AI,” not “analytic” or “bibliographic AI.”' AI Is an Anti-Primary Source Machine — History News Network www.hnn.us/article/ai-i...

AI Is an Anti-Primary Source Machine

Real voices from the past are threatened by chatbots designed to amplify — and ultimately become — the loudest voices in the room.

hnn.us

AJL has partnered with The Artists Against Antisemitism to create “How Libraries Can Support Jewish Patrons, Communities, and Authors: A Guide to Standing Together Against Antisemitism.” Learn more and download the guide at tinyurl.com/AJL-AAA-Blog

Yiddish tribute to Dolly Parton, a koved ir ondenk. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rw3U...

DOLLY PARTON 9 to 5 in Yiddish!.

YouTube video by Zola Usvjzov

youtube.com

I was in Littlemore Library in Oxford today and I saw this on the wall. I love it, anonymous small person. You are absolutely correct ❤️

Fallen type at the Huntington, in the library’s Damaged Goods show. @jaymoschella.bsky.social

Fascinating thread ⬇️

Michelle Margolis@mmargolis.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Hey, #bookhistory people, especially those who work on incunabula: Do Christian printers wax poetic (literally) about the miracle of print? I've taken it for granted from the Hebrew printers (they have many wonderful poems on the glories of print), but this may have just been a Jewish thing..?

“…our classrooms are not debate clubs or political advocacy training sessions. They are laboratories for encountering ideas.” Rachel Kranson and Michal Friedman reflect on academic Jewish Studies. jewishchronicle.timesofisrael.com/curious-abou...

Curious about Jewish studies? Reject insinuations and join our conversations

Jewish studies is an academic subject, not an advocacy organization, and our colleagues hail from many backgrounds.

jewishchronicle.timesofisrael.com

Ukrainian publishers call for support after Russian attacks destroy 10m books www.theguardian.com/books/2026/a...

Ukrainian publishers call for support after Russian attacks destroy 10m books

The country risks ‘the collapse of the entire book ecosystem’ following destruction of warehouses in July and August, say Ukrainian publishers

theguardian.com

Zumerfest, London’s new grassroots Yiddish culture festival, is off to a great start! Looking forward to teaching two interdisciplinary workshops based on my literature and dance research and leading some dancing at tomorrow’s ball! @uclhjs.bsky.social @artshumsucl.bsky.social @biajs.bsky.social

Two Jews, three opinions: An article in the Forward explores the types of Yiddish spoken at our Yiddish Week and what non-Haredi Yiddish speakers think about them.

What sort of Yiddish do Yiddishists speak today?

Linguist Emma Breslow interviewed 30 Yiddish speakers — mostly from New York, Boston, and Montreal — to study their language use

forward.com

today is a great day to turn off autoplay everywhere you can! @librarian.bsky.social (not very active here, mainly on mastodon)! compiled a great resource for switching off intrusive AI/LLM features once you switch this stuff off, you will not miss it for long at all. www.librarian.net/NoToAI/

Pleased that British Library has reinstated its Ethos thesis service, but disappointed that it does not include the 1000s of older PhD theses available in the earlier version. The effective destruction of this huge research archive is a tragedy: ethos.bl.uk

Well, yes and no. Great news that the Ethos metadata is back, but the full text isn’t, and won’t be. As this announcement says, you need to go a step further to the awarding university’s repository.

Digital Scholarship @ British Library@bldigischol.bsky.social · 4mo ago

EThOS platform restored! 'Following restoration work, all metadata records previously available on EThOS have now been restored, along with an additional 14,000 records added since the service was taken offline' - more to come https://www.bl.uk/stories/news/ethos-records-restored

I see British Library Pay Discourse is back, so sharing this again.

FairLibraryJobs@fairlibraryjobs.bsky.social · 12mo ago

New Fair Library Jobs blog post! On those low paid jobs it's difficult to call out, complexities around pay, the bleakness of the sector, and what you can do about it (spoiler: nag CILIP to Do Better and #JoinAUnion) sites.google.com/view/fairlib...

Guest Post — Legitimate but Not Loved: What Academic Librarians Think About AI scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2026/06/23/g...

Guest Post — Legitimate but Not Loved: What Academic Librarians Think About AI - The Scholarly Kitchen

While it’s true that AI may be viewed as "legitimate," it’s far from universally loved. Understanding that distinction tells us something important about how the technology may ultimately be adopted —...

scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org

If you're looking for somewhere in London to rest and cool off on hot days, here's a map from @london.gov.uk listing venues and spaces to help you beat the heat: https://apps.london.gov.uk/cool-spaces/ 🪭🚰💨

Cool post at the British Library! Barker Postdoctoral Fellow in Born-Digital Archives: 'Co-design a research project for a 12-month funded-fellowship, embedded in our expert curatorial and research teams'. LLMs for Personal Digital Archives ce0752li.webitrent.com/ce0752li_web...

New issue of 'Catalogue and Index' #C&I June 2026 (no. 215) is a special issue focusing on countdown to the retirement of the Original RDA Toolkit in May 2027 and the transition to Official RDA. Read it at: journals.cilip.org.uk/catalogue-an... #RDA #metadata #discovery #cataloguing 🐈📚

this is a brilliant explainer on why you shouldn't use link shorteners (paging everyone at the @financialtimes.com

James Whatley@whatleydude.com · 4mo ago

Terence's blog is why I have the Government advice saved in my bookmarks :) www.communications.gov.uk/blog/link-sh...

AI regurgitates antisemitic tropes reflecting human bias, study finds www.thejc.com/news/world/a...

AI regurgitates antisemitic tropes reflecting human bias, study finds - The Jewish Chronicle

Israeli researchers discovered that popular chatbots are more likely to associate Jewish people with particular stereotypes, including being more privileged, dominant and hierarchical but less warm and...

thejc.com

a topical #TopTipThursTAY for this rainy day: what to do with a wet book! While we hope everyone is careful with Bodleian library books, sometimes unexpected circumstances arise. If a book gets wet, there are a few simple steps you can take to reduce the damage!

'If you want to give people easy access to an AI-overview-free Google search, send them to this page' udm14.com

&udm=14 | the disenshittification Konami code

A quick way to get an AI-free search without any extra work.

udm14.com

Early modern antisemitic conspiracy theories about Jews and English libraries. In a London "News-letter" of 1649, there is a report that "the Jews" were offering 600,000 pounds to buy St. Paul's to turn into a synagogue and another 200,000 for the "Oxford Library." 1/ #BookHistory #JewishStudies

Students don’t need help from their educators to keep up with AI. But what we can do is encourage them to question it more. Here’s how: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/how-do-we-teach-ai-literacy-when-students-already-think-theyre-experts #HigherEd #AcademicSky #EduSky

How do we teach AI literacy when students already think they’re experts?

Students don’t need help from their educators to keep up with AI. But what we can do is encourage them to question it more. Here’s how

timeshighereducation.com

This cause is close to my heart - please sign: www.megaphone.org.uk/petitions/sa...

Save the Institute of Orthopaedics Library!

Digital systems cannot replace specialist expertise The Orthopaedics Library is a highly specialised service, supporting staff and students in clinical orthopaedics, musculoskeletal sciences, rehabili...

megaphone.org.uk

Was at an event in London last night on training to use archives to help people find family members killed in the Holocaust. There’s to be a deep-dive into trauma-informed practice in this context. I have a few years of experience with this because of Kitchener but will be good to formalise it.

Paul Chiddicks@chiddickstree.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Ethical dilemmas in genealogy are something we rarely discuss openly despite how common they can become once research deepens. In this piece I explore the emotional and ethical challenges family historians can face #DNA #Genealogy #FamilyHistory chiddickstree.substack.com/p/ethical-di...