Caught in an 2FA death spiral again

Ha! The original Lancet article on the dangers of reading in bed is here: doi.org/10.1016/S014...

Good start the week read - Steve Harnad on open access (in general) and LLMs katinamagazine.org/content/arti...

Everyman Cinema goers - is the volume always cranked up on the music in the bar bit or is it just a Friday night thing? Went for "The Secret Agent" last night (v good) but can't imagine sitting in the bar comfortably at that volume

Rupert Gatti will feel very Muir Gray to health librarians - "there is a crisis? Great" we can do some stuff #CopimConference

New Book! Out Now! Slow Librarianship: Reflections and Practices Authors describe what slow librarianship means to them in their work and roles while sharing concrete practices and ways to enact the tenets of slow librarianship in your work. https://litwinbooks.com/books/slow-librarianship/

Now Siddaharth Soni - Scholarly Book and the Digital Commons. Always glad to return to the commons #CopimConference

This looks like a great read on the role of pharma in the medical knowledge environment - open access #medlibs 📚 www.matteringpress.org/product/ghos...

Love the point from @simonjbains.bsky.social that projects can be a real motivator during times of cuts and pressure #CopimConference

Discussion of preservation of PhD theses at #CopimConference - NHS has a potential interest in the lower academic status masters dissertations too where these are based on in practice work in clinical environments

Oops. Misread the #CopimConference timetable so am going to arrive for coffee break #ErrorDiary

Heading for #CopimConference looking forward to thinking about what it all might mean in an NHS context and chatting with a few folk. Made it a proper conference by going for a #libraruns squelch around the forest this morning

... hired a librarian for his research group to help organize citations and support literature searches. The collaboration was hugely helpful. So helpful, in fact, that his colleagues started asking to ‘borrow’ the information specialist for their own projects. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

New (to me) discovery of how EBSCO interfaces will add in mapped terms even when you have all the search expanders switched off #medlibs 📚https://support.library.hee.nhs.uk/support/solutions/articles/27000131073-Why-am-I-seeing-highlighted-search-terms-I-didn-t-use-in-the-Hub-EBSCOHost-

AHHHHHHHHH

How much could we add to the visible research record if more people took advantage of Green open access? theconversation.com/thousands-of...

Sign up for our "Introduction to Orienteering" course CHIG are hosting a course for adults in NE London from 18th April through to 23rd May. The cost is just £60 for all 6 sessions. Places are limited, so don't delay. For details and booking see www.sientries.co.uk/event.php?el...

"As a parent and an author, I can see the value of reading for pleasure... Books can open us up to new light." Sarah Hagger-Holt reflects on the importance of reading 📚 https://thefriend.org/article/the-national-year-of-reading-sarah-hagger-holt-says-quakers-should-get-involved

ooh Ian Hamilton Finlay thing in the print room at the British Museum www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/dancers...

Not watched yet but this looks an interesting series for #medlibs Barts hospital through time includes the archives www.channel5.com/show/alice-r...

Indie loving Sheffield Library School grads of the past near thirty years may be glad to hear you can still find new stuff to dance to at Offbeat

So jealous of this compared to the mean plans Essex have that is focussed on how many flats they can cram in and how small can the public provision be

I've been thinking about how Victorian Era scientists accomplished so much work, until I came across this: The Darwin family lived at Down House with a butler, cook, gardener, coachman, housemaid, two nursery maids, and a governess for the girls. Never less than 8 servants lived at Down House.

A win but only a partial one as charges for reservations is a major downgrade to the service

Join our EMERGENCY PROTEST, this THURSDAY, 12th, February, from 9.15am, COUNTY HALL ATRIUM entrance. Market Road, immediately prior to the Essex County Council budget meeting. ALL WELCOME. #SaveOurLibraries #Essex See comments for more details and Facebook event.

STOP ESSEX LIBRARY CUTS! It’s meant to be the National Year of Reading-hasn’t Essex CC noticed? The first decade of austerity saw Essex Library Services cut its book stock by nearly half a million, so this £100,000 cut to the book fund hits an already depleted service. #libraries #saveourlibraries

This is TK Maxx*-tastic *other vendors of random tat are available

Eric Ravilious was a virtuoso at capturing everyday scenes and little details from English provincial life. This view (1935) is from the home he shared with Tirzah Garwood at Bank House, Castle Hedingham, Essex.

Shoots

The great hunter approaches his prey

Saw that hotbot.com has revived as a genAI tool. Tried to ask it about how it works and it keeps answering about the old hotbot search engine 🤦‍♂️Included an answer that fails to understand it is squatting on the domain so the old search engine no longer exists 🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️

oh btw if you need the CIA World Factbook because they took it down with no warning because we can't have nice things, here's where you can get the PDF for the 2024-2025 edition: annas-archive.li/md5/92d7b783...

The CIA just stopped publishing their World Factbook and took every page, including the archived copies of previous versions! This sucks. It was public domain, so I recovered the 2020 edition (the last one published as a zip file) and shared it to GitHub simonwillison.net/2026/Feb/5/t...

Hot on the heels of changes at Google Books 📚

Chill fox

Love Newslet - always an interesting selection of reading

Bad #medlibs 📚

AI chat at work leaves me stuck in the open plan badly wanting a piece of toast youtu.be/LRq_SAuQDec?...

Good news that the documents previously indexed in the NHS National Grey Literature Collection (All Cats Grey) are now included in the King's Fund Database #Medlibs 📚

My town is regularly gridlocked with cars despite being eminently walk / rideable. It would be even easier if there were fewer cars crawling around

The first lecture from my series "Beyond The Hype: Thinking Critically about AI in Healthcare" is now up on YouTube for anyone who wasn't able to make it to the live webinar www.youtube.com/watch?v=03bJ... Slides are here: www.canva.com/design/DAG_u... Next week: "Challenging the Empowerment Myth"

What fresh hell is this?

january 30th: a partially formed mr. blobby stands by the perimeter fence and screams for thirty seconds before disappearing

Trip to the Cartoon Museum for the Future was then exhibition. Great standing collection of early to modern cartoons and comics

Come home to find a truly beautiful gift for me #TrueLove

We built a thing impactkit.com/blog/announc...

New petition: "Ban people from using noise cancelling headphones when they take Teams calls in the open plan"

The UK has lost its measles elimination status, the World Health Organization has announced. Vaccine disinformation is a worldwide pandemic that is killing us.