And since I posted the muppets, I’m also posting my carrot from April 2020. Yes, it arrived like this. And yes, I’m an art historian so my FIRST thought was Courbet.

You forgot one (might be the best one tbh)

a muppet twist on iconic art: thread

Answering a reference question about our uncataloged copies of Hakluyt’s Voyages means I gotta catalog them now 😭😭😭🎄🎄🎄😭😭😭

You absolutely will not read a better academic thread on BlueSky this week. This sort of thing is what makes having an account here worthwhile 🗃️

Went to the Norton Simon Museum for the first time, too. What a lovely place. Smitten with this Toulouse Lautrec.

Went to NM for the first time and saw some things.

Went to the 45th annual Black Doll Show in LA, at the William Grant Still Community Center. The show is called Sower of Seeds, and artists responded to Octavia Butler’s work Parable of the Sower. An amazing exhibit, with some incredibly talented artists. wgsac.wordpress.com/the-45th-ann...

Hey #booksky or #rarebooksky, if you want to join @bibsocamer.bsky.social but can't afford it, let me know and I'll try to cover your membership dues. (I'll do as many as I can afford, but I may not be able to cover everyone if the demand is too high. Thanks for understanding).

Reposting request now that more people might be back in the office. :)

Do I know anyone who is 1) at work today, 2) has access to Digital Evans, and 3) would be willing to check something for me? I have access to ECCO, but would like to know if there’s a different copy of Evans 35793 reproduced in Evans. (ECCO has BPL’s copy.)

Postin’ memes, days late

They go Well you know,if you wanna talk about it, I'll be here, you know & you'll probably feel a lot better if you talk about it So why don't you talk about it? I go No I don't want to, I'm okay, I'll figure it out myself But they just keep bugging me They just keep bugging me & it builds up inside

A zillion bait boxes around but seems pointless if there’s also a regular rat & sparrow buffet like this.

I guess at least a lot of people are learning a new word?

Get on your library board, folks. docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

My colleagues and I had a busy few weeks, and acquired some wonderful things for BPL’s collections… 🧵

In Nashville & got to take a tour at Hatch Show Print, which has designed & printed letterpress posters for music shows & other events since 1879.

This is amazing and I kinda wanna see video of it moving.

A few years ago, I wrote a piece about Walker's Appeal, it's various editions, and digitizing archives. A good little intro to a text worthy of a much deeper dive: daily.jstor.org/comparing-ed...

Is it four-year-old-surgical-site pain from nerves deciding to do some more regenerating? Or is it nascent shingles? Super fun trying to figure it out! #giftsthatkeepongiving

Takes a certain kind of perversity to put dairy in a hospital cafe hummus & pita cup. Like, take the usually reliably vegan thing and fuck it up. Thanks, Sodexo. Truly special decision.

Chromolithograph and wood engravings of bats from the 1882-84 edition of the German natural history series ‘Brehms Thierleben.’ #chromolithograph #bats #naturalhistory #naturalhistoryillustration #scientificillustration #batart #sciart

This is amazing and immediately brought to mind Charmaine Wilkerson’s Good Dirt. www.mfa.org/press-releas...

This is important, and apparently the first works in a US museum restituted to the descendants of an enslaved creator. Archived link: archive.today/2025.10.29-2...

Bookpeople! Does anyone know where I can buy uncut printed sheets to teach basic imposition and format (rather than the DIY sheets I typically print off on 8.5x11)? The Rare Book School's bibliographic format kits appear to be out of stock.

Update: didn’t get it right. Underdone middle. :(

Operation “use up all the apples in the house before they rot” underway.

What just fell out of this court record? Pounce! Before blotting paper became available, & for long after too, people used pulverized cuttlefish bone to dry ink. You can it clearly on this inky mess of a signature, together with a piece of contemporary blotting paper for comparison 🗃️ #bookhistory

Note to self: add “catalog the pike” to next week’s to-do list...

Boston Public Library holds the “pattern pike” used by John Brown to order arms for the raid. According to BPL records, it passed from Brown to John Hopper (son of Isaac), to William Lloyd Garrison, and thence to the library. Yes, it is SHARP.

OUT NOW ❤️‍🔥The House Archives Built & Other Thoughts on Black Archival Possibilities by Dorothy Berry is now available: www.weherespace.org. The first 50 copies sold will be signed.

Oh no no no, this is so awful. He was such an incredible artist and we should have had so much more music from him, even if it was always sporadic. A true goddamn genius gone way way too soon. www.rollingstone.com/music/music-...

“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” Matthew Wasserbach, brokerage manager of Express Customs Clearance, said of the UPS backlog. “It’s totally unprecedented.” @cnbc.com $UPS www.nbcnews.com/business/bus...

Here’s a typical bundle of file papers from the Boston Municipal Court archives. It probably hasn’t been unwrapped since it was docketed in 1822. The organization of the sub-layers is significant, & I always photograph bundles so that I can put them back together as I found them. I love this work! 🗃️

I love community cookbooks. #newacq

I am seeking book recommendations for everyday life of women in colonial and early republic US, esp. if published since 2000. Suggestions?

Nothing like misreading a product page and ordering half the number of prosthetics you actually need. 🤦🏻‍♀️😭 On the upside, it’s a new to me product and doesn’t seem to suck. (And it’s not goddamn pink!) So I just ordered another so I’ll have a pair. Happy pink-fucking-tober to me.

IT’S BACK. 🦑

“For Major Thomas Lenord to be poubbleshed to the several coumpeneys acording to the content of sad procllemation as folloeth: to the several compeneys in ould Tunton Freetown and dart -mouth of the remaing [remaining] compeneys I acknowledge of my sellef, Benjan Church Colonel”

Today’s paleography challenge. We figured it out, eventually. Massachusetts, 1711, on a broadside printed in Boston. Going through the library’s broadside boxes is really hammering home for me the patterns that happen again and again and again in this country.

Spooky season is finally here! This Office of the Dead features a scene of the raising of Lazarus with skull-tacular details ☠️ Book of Hours produced in Italy and dated 1507, now @bodleian.ox.ac.uk MS. Douce 9, fols. 182v-183r

I have plotted for YEARS that when (if) I own a place with a powder room, it’s getting some kind of silvered wallpaper with flowers and critters.

Archivist job! The Boston Public Library (BPL) is seeking an archivist for a 3-year grant-funded position to survey, inventory, and manage historic institutional records related to BPL’s Central Library in Copley Square.

very pleased to be offering an open ended Archives Cataloguing post working with the University of Edinburgh's wide and deep literary archives. please do share with anyone interested! elxw.fa.em3.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid...

🧵

I get that the news cycle is packed right now, but I just heard from a colleague at the Smithsonian that this is fully a GIANT SQUID BEING EATEN BY A SPERM WHALE and it’s possibly the first ever confirmed video according to a friend at NOAA 10 YEAR OLD ME IS LOSING HER MIND (a thread 🧵)

Dear autocorrect: No, I definitely did not mean “Prada” when I typed the name of the museum in Madrid. 🙄🙃

This was a new one for me. Wondering if it is mishap driven.