Overview of ongoing issues at the British Library by The Standard > The worst of times: Trouble at the British Library Cyber chaos, striking staff and a crisis of leadership. Claudia Cockerell investigates a national treasure’s year of reckoning

Some local news > A supermajority of Columbus Metropolitan Library workers on Friday submitted signed union cards to the State Employment Relations Board to begin the union election process. buff.ly/ZLHSBR7

Fonts are in the news! I am surprised that libraries have not taken more of an interest given the design, values, identity, cultural expressiveness and business issues they raise (albeit in small ways). An exploration of ecosystem and choices from a while ago buff.ly/sfBJVu8

Interested to come across this community based diamond access publication. I wonder how many regional library publications of this type there are? > Vol. 13 No. 2 (2025): Pennyslvania Libraries: Research & Practice buff.ly/tBVSJhb

Nice placard - "things are bad when a conservator loses their patience' > British Library staff 'feel huge disconnect' from leadership - Arts Professional buff.ly/dT9tRI8

'The winning content? Hyperlocal news, breaking news (as it happens), scoops, notable first-person narratives, and investigative journalism. AI can’t or won’t summarize this information because it’s too recent or too unique.' buff.ly/Q2CXrYg

'The acquisition would also complete the conquest of Hollywood by tech insurgents.' Netflix to buy Warner Bros. buff.ly/32trr8V

Zig quits GitHub, gripes about Microsoft's AI obsession buff.ly/MI6SKYP

A voice out of the dark of time; the once and future LIS discipline. New blog post by myself and @lynrobinson.bsky.social. theoccasionalinformationist.com/2025/11/25/a...

Extraordinary numbers about tax revenues and impact on irish national economy of one drug > How weight-loss drug Mounjaro is making Ireland the world’s fastest-growing economy www.irishtimes.com/podcasts/in-...

Nice overview. Thank you for generous comments.

I enjoyed speaking at Charleston recently. Here are my slides > Libraries, librarianship and cross-lamination: notes on education and career preparation for libraries buff.ly/NHtpkIq

'Arizona State University is creating ASU London, expanding its presence in the United Kingdom with a U.K.-accredited higher educational institution.' buff.ly/3hPgAr9

Facilitating our work is a great army of library staff, who are also cultural workers. Without them, the library does not function, the books do not get read, the culture does not come to pass. buff.ly/riUOc4I

A key component, the AI Fluency initiative, was announced in June and ensures that every student, beginning with the Class of 2029, graduates fluent in applying AI within their field of study.

AI with everything > "The Ohio State University has announced a major [AI] Faculty Hiring Initiative that will add 100 new tenure-track faculty with expertise in AI over the next five years. The initiative will expand AI research and education across disciplines ... "

The Columbus Metropolitan Library has pressed pause on plans to build the city's 24th library branch > uncertainty in library funding due to recent state funding policy changes and the move to reform Ohio’s property tax laws buff.ly/6qeucjQ

Very nicely done. Intriguing font choice. Two freely available fonts, one open source. Each font is created by an interesting designer who publishes a small range of distinctive fonts. Great to see this thoughtfulness.

Chegg's CEO once said he's the 'poster child' for AI shock. Now, the company is slashing 45% of staff | Fortune fortune.com/2025/10/28/c...

British Library workers to strike > “The employer’s well-paid executives need to take the blinkers off and understand that our hard-working members are what makes the British Library the vital cultural institution that it is."

Cal State > As part of the effort, the university is paying OpenAI $16.9 million to provide ChatGPT Edu, the company’s tool for schools, to more than half a million students and staff — which OpenAI heralded as the world’s largest rollout of ChatGPT to date.

Really? ... > Cal State’s partners, like Amazon, said they were eager to help students use a range of A.I. tools in different ways — not just use chatbots to look up answers. buff.ly/nFLiKPH

Anil Dash > But Atlas is a browser that actively fights against the web, and in doing so, it's fighting against the very idea that you should have control over what you see, where you go, and what watches you while you're there. ilo.im/167ut1

"The special initiative aligns with the foundation’s overarching goal of reducing political polarization." > Hundreds of Carnegie Libraries to Receive $10,000 Gifts in Celebration of United States’ 250th Anniversary | Carnegie Corporation of New York

New From @lorcand.bsky.social: The Informational Disciplines www.lorcandempsey.net/the-informat... #infoscience #librarianship #libraries

UK Gov. AWS exposure > "until significant diversification or sovereign cloud adoption occurs, the UK government’s own stance shows an uncomfortable contradiction with the very resilience principles regulators have advocated.”

Discuss > "Technologies like LLMs have utility, but the absurd way they've been over-hyped, the fact they're being forced on everyone, and the insistence on ignoring the many valid critiques about them make it very difficult to focus on legitimate uses where they might add value."

'Data centres accounted for 22% of the electricity consumed in Ireland last year — up from 21% in 2023, and significantly higher than the 5% share they held in 2015.' buff.ly/U7K3drd

[Stephen Hawking's] disks are now part of a project at Cambridge University Library to rescue hidden knowledge trapped on floppy disks. The Future Nostalgia project reflects a larger trend in the information flooding into archives and libraries around the world. buff.ly/5FfQU3H

'Graphic designers love Helvetica. Type designers hate it.' buff.ly/doWlmZQ

Lovely to see this nod from somebody whose work is central here.

'More and more families are measuring a school’s worth by what it delivers rather than what it represents.' buff.ly/GfbMVaQ

I like the 'boots of concrete' phrase :-) > 'Large companies have built vast consolidated infrastructure - we are used to thinking of information as immaterial, however, AI has also emphasized how the cloud has boots of concrete.' buff.ly/MAzHirK

'University of California faculty and alumni won five Nobel Prizes this week, highlighting the ongoing contributions of America’s #1 public research university and the central role of federal funding in advancing world-changing scientific inquiry.'

Harsh words for FIFA > 'Dynamic pricing, crypto detritus and corporate doublespeak have made the task of buying 2026 World Cup tickets a grim case study in the monetization of emotion' buff.ly/n5B4v3K

The pope has condemned clickbait as a “degrading” part of journalism, at a private audience with global newswires.

'The median student is willing to pay up to $2,617 (12.5%) more to attend a college where the share of students with opposing political views is 10 percentage points lower, suggesting that political identity plays a meaningful role in the college choice process.' buff.ly/d4cSoNZ

Feeling a slight touch of imposter syndrome as I prepare for my keynote at Charleston ... Libraries, librarianship and cross-LAMination. I discuss education and career preparation. www.charleston-hub.com/the-charlest...

Deloitte will provide a partial refund to the [Australian] federal government over a $440,000 report that contained several errors, after admitting it used generative artificial intelligence to help produce it.

... an unprecedented grand tour of bibliophilic crime, which snaked its way from north-east to south-west Europe between spring 2022 and winter 2023. As many as 170 rare Russian books, valued at more than £2.5m, vanished ...

"from hard experience, I and others working in scholarly communications have learned that the term “institutional repository” often elicits blank expressions from faculty. It is much more efficient to emphasize prestige, visibility, impact, legacy, flexibility—whatever resonates." buff.ly/UsQhdNA

Dame Sarah Mullally has been named as the first female leader in the history of the Church of England as Downing Street announced the 106th archbishop of Canterbury buff.ly/BnHcRwj

'The Ann Arbor District Library announced that it plans to acquire the Ann Arbor Observer, one of Ann Arbor’s most beloved publications, serving the community since 1976. The acquisition is subject to the parties finalizing the terms of a purchase agreement.' buff.ly/EFSbWGi

"My editor’s email started off friendly enough, but then came the hammer blow: “We need you to remove all the em dashes. People assume that means it’s written by AI.” " buff.ly/rLpQjTr

Emma Donoghue uses immigrant stories from Western archives. > But researching archives is quite a solitary experience, and every now and then I come across something that I feel needs to go to a wider audience, sometimes in the form of a novel and in this case in the form of a play. buff.ly/ThRpICv

Tim Berners-Lee >> Somewhere between my original vision for web 1.0 and the rise of social media as part of web 2.0, we took the wrong path. buff.ly/rAcxesP

More Central Ohio news > Meta expanding New Albany site for the world's highest capacity data center buff.ly/iCGuzO9

Former US president Barack Obama has been awarded the Freedom of Dublin. [...] Mr Obama was presented with a first edition of Ulysses and a bottle of Teeling Whiskey.

will.i.am to teach ASU class on agentic AI | ASU News news.asu.edu/20250924-uni...

Delightful. I especially like the story about the letter trying to figure out which typeface it is from > [Children's] Books on type and typography in English — for those who are too young to apply to a design school buff.ly/z3TsJec