I've been thinking about this lately, esp. as it applies to burnout. When you add in all the unpaid labor libraryland requires to function, the salaries become even more egregious. And don't get me started on the specialized skill set needed for library work - looking at you, #medlibs.

Bold move of a commercial publisher to be questioning the morality of people working in libraries.

I mentioned my work on Edinburgh Diamond during this presentation but I am on strike as a @ucuedinburgh.bsky.social member, Edinburgh didn't pay for me to be at #UKSG2026, and I replaced my slides with this. Please donate to our fighting fund if you're able. www.ucuedinburgh.org.uk/hff-fundrais...

Really important post! I've been struggling with the embeddedness of profoundly unethical companies in knowledge infrastructure, great to see that acknowledged and with achievable suggestions of how to move forward.

How Thomson Reuters powers ICE and Palantir:

JUST ASK - if you are in an institution, ask the procurement/finance people for a report based on *supplier names* to get a sense of how deeply you are in with some of these companies. Group all the different names for one company together (eg: RELX/Elsevier/LexisNexis etc). It is enlightening.

All finished! The full text of my presentation is available at opensauce.simonxix.com/eor2025/ #UKSG2026

The Hidden REF Competition 2026 officially launches at the end of May! The last competition had 24 categories and we need your help to ensure these categories still reflect the full diversity of research outputs and roles. Find out more and share your category suggestions:

Lots of people conferencing at the moment - so please conference accessibly!

On the one hand I am sad not to be seeing library pals at conferences this week, on the other so far today has been a lie-in and Goblin cuddles rather than a horrible train journey

Conference kindness reminder: presenting can be super stressful and scary, especially if it’s the first time you’ve done it, or public speaking isn’t part of your day job. If you’re the first person to ask a question, thank the speaker and say something nice.

Conference accessibility reminders: use the mic, add alt text to images posted here or on other social media, stick to timings so people get proper breaks.

What I find amazing is that there is not one word on common practices of polling which are also extremely problematic - such as paying very litte to Amazon Mechanical Turk gig workers - to fill out surveys -> 🖱 www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Infrastructure Landlords: The Rentier Capitalism of Commercial Academic Publishers This piece explores how major academic publishers are becoming “infrastructure landlords”, not just publishing research, but owning the systems around it. 👉 www.openlibhums.org/news/931/ #OpenAccess #ScholComm

"If you want to understand where the commercial parts of scholarly communications may be heading, you need to look beyond policy documents, conference panels, or public-facing strategy statements. You should look at what large commercial actors say when speaking to investors." Great piece!

Goblin is opposed to me doing any activity other than cuddling her, including going to the post box, but she definitely considers going to work worse.

You are invited to participate in a survey on health sciences librarians’ use of generative AI (genAI) tools in their knowledge synthesis (KS) practice, including systematic and scoping reviews. Info & survey link: stfx.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_... #medlibs #canmedlibs #ukmedlibs #HealthLibAust

Whatever you do, do NOT let your incredibly cute get get in the way of posting your industrial mandate ballot! Our feline friends want you to make your voice heard as we fight back against course closures, redundancies, and ridiculous student-staff ratios. Get to the postbox today!

“Many discussions still approach AI primarily as a digital technology, but in many of these countries, AI is becoming visible through the infrastructures that sustain it: data centers, mineral extraction, energy demand, water-intensive cooling systems, and digital labor chains…”

📚 If you are someone who is not super aware of Advanced Search options, then I guess you should read this if you can stand Substack (which you maybe shouldn't). Also, talk to a librarian (even online) to ask if you're actually looking in the right place. Many databases aren't searchable via Google

Business cards for ARCH (Abortion Recovery Care and Helpline) Trust have appear in my work toilets. Quick Googling says they are SPUC (Society of the Protection of the Unborn Child) affiliated so presumably have a prolife agenda, does anyone know anything more?

Regular reminder that RELX -- owner of academic publisher Elsevier -- is one of those brokers providing data to ICE.

This is why I increasingly believe that librarians should use our limited time and resources to lobby for proper regulation and governance and not on developing 'literacy' or 'ethical use' policies after adoption, when it's far too late. It's like teaching victims of crime to be more 'ethical'.

Rethinking angel status as she used the litter tray next to my desk and then dug all 10 of her front claws into my leg whilst I was delivering training

Just remembered I really should register for this for that book chapter @patchedelbows.bsky.social and I wrote

❓Can I cite PRISMA-ScR as a methodology for my scoping review? 💬The answer is no. The PRISMA extension for scoping reviews is the guidance for reporting a scoping review, not how to conduct the review. Learn more in the JBI Manual for Evidence Synthesis: https://ow.ly/WRWi50Yq4bc

Once again reminding all academics in the UK that they really, really, really, really should sign up to @alcs.co.uk Lifetime membership is £36 and they take it out of the money they collect for you so it really is "free money". I'm getting a little over £100 *every year*. Do it!

Metadata is truly foundational to everything about research and scholarly communications - if people can't find or discover it, it's all but useless! To misquote an awesome movie, "if you don't build it, they won't come!" 📚

There's so many book reviews in Ex Libris Primo because it benefits the corporate vendor of that software which libraries continue to use despite the software's widely-publicised failings.

Controversial but - students *perceive* they have been failed when what has happened is they have failed to understand information retrieval is a skill requiring effort. I don't believe a zero friction experience is realistic or desirable in learning, actually.

We've got a great programme, we've got tickets, now we need you! Tickets and bursary applications now available for #CALC26, taking place online from Tuesday 12th-Thursday 14th May. Hope you can join us! sites.google.com/view/calccon...

"large organisations control increasingly significant portions of the scholarly communication infrastructure ... Alternative publishing platforms that offer open infrastructure and transparent metadata represent attempts to reclaim this layer of control as a public good."

How can alternative publishing practices become established as the new [email protected] & @researchconsulting.bsky.social have explored this & similar questions in our new report Charting New Paths: The Promise of Alternative Publishing Practices.  doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

Bless the librarians of Aberystwyth University for sending this blog out to their students: "Wait a Minute…What If I Don’t Want to Use AI?" #LibrarySky

Stupid tricksy weather that‘s cold enough to require a jacket on the way to work but not the way home so I leave my stupid jacket with my house keys in the pocket in the library that’s up a stupid giant hill

Harriet Taylor Mill officially recognised as co-author of 'On Liberty'! dailynous.com/2026/03/19/o...

Has anyone written a review of the restructuring going on across UK HE? Trying to understand what is common across institutions: large, team-taught courses, centralised workload models, limited to no research time, promotion directly tied to grant income. How many consultancy firms are pushing this?

i love how so much of digital accessibility is just reaffirming what librarians have been trying to tell you for 1000 years: METADATA IS IMPORTANT, ACTUALLY

If you’re wondering whether this has been taken out of context, the context makes it worse! The VC claimed this was the explanation for staff in 3 unions passing a vote of no confidence - rather than that being a rational response to university leadership decisions.

This has prompted me to reread Joan Thirsk’s “The History Women”, in Chattel, Servant or Citizen (1995) in which she proposes “Thirsk’s Law” …

It's a lovely post, genuinely a breath of fresh air to read

I wrote something (not directly about AI) on cryptogyny — sorry still depressing, BUT ☺️ I do end on actionable things and some fun examples along the way, such as "Comparing [the 108 women scholars until 1800] with 58,995 [men], we find that they were on average better"‼️ olivia.science/cryptogyny

REF and workload are inseparable. If the university wants staff to produce submissible research outputs, the workload model has to guarantee the time to do that – not just in principle, but in enforceable practice.

I reckon gender is a factor in the library and archives space with the incidents of “LLM says this book/document exists, even if you, a professional expert on this collection, say it doesn’t“

ALL OF THIS SHIT IS ABOUT LABOR I'M GOING INSANE WATCHING LIBRARIANS IGNORE THIS

Today in My University SUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCKS

Very confusing moment for me when RDA got mentioned in the context of metadata standards and I had a horrible cataloguing flashback, turned out to be Research Data Alliance and not Resource Description and Access

I started in libraries cataloguing books, and now work with databases like Scopus that are primarily designed for journal articles - it's obvious to me that those systems just don't quite work for books. Properly structured metadata for translations and editions and chapters is a real challenge.

I spent 4 months trying to answer a simple question: has this book been translated into my language? Turns out no one tracks this. Not ISBN registries. Not Amazon. Not Google. Not libraries. So I built a tool that crosses four databases to piece it together. zenodot.app

This is such a valuable resource! I’m surprised (and also not really surprised) that such a thing didn’t exist previously.