A few weeks back, as part of my #slvresidency, I created a big, fully-searchable database with all the content from the 24 volumes of Sands & MacDougall's directories digitised by the SLV. I've finally written up the details: https://updates.timsherratt.org/2025/11/12/a-new-way-of-searching.html […]

"Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake." Wallace Stevens, born on this day in 1879

The SLV is digitising thousands of photos of streetscapes around Victoria created by the Committee for Urban Action in the 1970s. Here's some from Fitzroy: https://find.slv.vic.gov.au/discovery/search?query=series,exact,Committee%20for%20Urban%20Action%20Collection.%20Photographic%20survey […]

I'm honoured to be speaking to @petermcphee.bsky.social on Mon 6 Oct at 1pm AEDT about my book Dangers of Youth: Age, Criminality, and Juvenile Justice Reform in Third Republic France at an online event hosted by the George Rudé Society. Please register here: uni-sydney.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

I'll be speaking at this event: The 80th anniversary of World War II & the formation of the #UN United Nations. What have we learnt and what may the next 80 years hold? Join us at @curtinuniversity.bsky.social tomorrow evening, brought to you by the Faculty of Humanities and #GlobalFutures Curtin.

Depressing news. Meanjin hardly posed a significant call on the University of Melbourne's finances: its annual budget was no more than a third of the VC's salary. To shut it down diminishes the University of Melbourne and leaves a large hole in Australia's already threadbare cultural landscape

Since our very first issue Meanjin and Overland have been comrades, mates, rivals, and drinking buddies. The UMP board’s decision is a shockingly myopic act of cultural vandalism which will grievously harm the Australian literary community.

Dr Samson Lim (Monash U) is giving the next seminar of the Historians of Southeast Asia Network (HiSEAs) on the 'feral territories' of Eastern Bangkok, Thailand. Intrigued? Join us on Thu 11 September, 4.00 pm AEST on Zoom: anu.zoom.us/j/8293727404.... Meeting ID: 829 3727 4043/ Passcode:491526.

Anyone out there in #genealogy , #LocalHistory or #FamilyHistory land know of any collections that should be identified?

I've just had confirmation that Newcastle Writers Festival's partnership with Port Waratah Coal Services has ended. I'm pleased to hear this and hope this is an ongoing alignment of NWF's values with their actions. Fossil fuels are the villains and we don't need them to tell stories

New rule. A parent may only propose removing a book from the school library only after reading it in its entirety and delivering a book report to the librarian. Until then no discussion shall be entered into.

Hazel Rowley once said, 'The opposite is also true' about anything she could write about her biographical subject, Christina Stead.

Will use this opportunity again to mention my list of online and open access radical historical collections. Nearly 1000 listed from across the world. hatfulofhistory.wordpress.com/radical-onli...

“You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page. Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.” Annie Proulx, born on this day in 1935

My interview with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about The Red Witch and the art of biography has just been released on the Biographers in Conversation podcast. www.biographersinconversation.com/s03e05-natha...

'The Red Witch: A Biography of Katharine Susannah Prichard' open.substack.com/pub/gabriell... @nathanhobby.bsky.social

PM's Lit Award shortlists: anzlitlovers.com/2025/08/12/2...

Passing Strangers, by Felix Riesenberg (1932). This is such a radical book. Economic exploitation, a terrorist bombing in Wall Street, breakdown of the established order. Felix Riesenberg was 53 and on his fifth career when he wrote it. Amazing book, amazing writer. neglectedbooks.com/?...

Tomorrow is the 80th anniversary of the death of John Curtin, Australian prime minister from 1941 to 1945. I wrote about the depictions of his death by his biographers and some aspects of their biographical methodology. nathanhobby.com/2025/07/04/t...

Our book is out! The surprising history of masks worn by plague doctors, factory workers, trench soldier, hospital nurses, and the rest of us. yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300... @yalepress.bsky.social @yalebooks.bsky.socuial

Exactly this! Which is why I've created this purely online conference!

A fascinating trip down the historical censorship of comics in Australia from @iurgi.com - well worth your time to read #Libraries #AusLibChat www.iurgi.com/2025/06/book...

New on my blog - revisiting The Mysterious Cities of Gold 35 years later. Any other fans? nathanhobby.com/2025/06/22/t...

An exhibition I've been working on - '1945: The Price of Peace', commemorating 80 years since the death of John Curtin and the end of the Second World War. nathanhobby.com/2025/06/21/1...

A new post on my blog nathanhobby.com/2025/06/10/a...

A story on ghost towns with some great photos. www.abc.net.au/news/2025-06...

but his suit isn't from Temu so it all balances out

Sounds like a you problem!

Wow, it's come to this already. Enshittification of standards accelerated by AI.

Larissa Waters has called out the hypocrisy of Woodside’s “very well paid, wealthy fossil fuel Executive” Meg O'Neill for being the “head of a massive, dirty gas company” & having the nerve to accuse young ppl’s online purchases of causing the climate crisis🙄 #abc

Abebooks keeps thinking I'm tempted to spend $80 to get this rare but rather unattractive dust jacket for the 1931 florin edition (which I have sans jacket) of Katharine Prichard's Haxby Circus. Abebooks is correct - but I will not be giving in.

I wrote a biography for kids about Creswell Eastman (Aussie STEM stars series). He loved science but he he didn't just want to understand, he wanted to use his knowledge to help people. And he did. www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05...

Political memorabilia on eBay currently: Jack Lang's inscribed wooden box for a mere $5000!

Biographical puzzle pieces that don't fit... theguardian.com/culture/2025/a…

Interesting portrait - the Monkees are an interesting chapter in pop culture. www.theguardian.com/music/2025/m...

The Enola Gay was apparently a DEI plane. This kind of ham-fisted error is almost enough to make one wonder whether an inexperienced, careless, drunken idiot is overseeing the Department of Defense… www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

"The trouble with subscription models for purchasers is that they work fine until suddenly they don’t." Good fr Isaac Wink abt how research libraries trying to preserve the scholarly record aren't the same as my Spotify access--and that 🤨Clarivate move. scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2025/03/05/g...

The winner of the 2025 Hazel Rowley Literary Fellowship has been announced anzlitlovers.com/2025/03/06/2...

#RareBook peeps. We recently got a large library donation. In it were two volumes of a set of “Select Farces” from c.1805. This isn’t my area of experience so I was hoping for some guidance. Q1. Would the name on the left be the owner or the binder?

Harsh but true - politics in a state owned by Woodside and friends. www.crikey.com.au/2025/02/28/w...

"Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised." John Steinbeck

You can’t beat a good bibliography. Ann Allen Shockley gained some fame as a writer of lesbian fiction for Avon in the 70s, but her day job was as a special collections librarian for Fisk University. She wrote several bibliographic works, including “Afro-American Women Writers, 1746-1933” 1/

A few years ago, most major publishers seemed to have a big range of print-on-demand/ebook editions of neglected backlist books, with slightly depressing non-specific covers (ie Pan Macmillan Bello, Faber Finds, Gollancz Gateway, Bloomsbury Reader). Now they all seem to have withered. (1/2)

The Internet Archive has to date downloaded 500 terabytes of US government websites, which it crawls at the end of every presidential term. The whole archive is fully searchable. This effort's housed by a donation-funded nonprofit, not a branch of the US government. blog.archive.org/2024/05/08/e...

@tenille.bsky.social @bethanykeats.bsky.social and Mia-Francesca Jones have a podcast! It's on writing! You should listen to it!

OpenAI right now

New Zealand: Covid-19 ‘brain fog’ likely factor in near-miss train crash in South Island. "A KiwiRail engineer experiencing after-effects of Covid-19 failed to stop at a red signal nearly causing a train collision last year." Source: archive.md/6GI2m