#OTD 11 March 1936, death of Robert Walker, pioneering black football player. Born in Sierra Leone, raised near Dumfries, a Scottish Cup finalist in 1876 with Third Lanark, team mate of Andrew Watson at Parkgrove, a fascinating character. www.scottishsporthistory.com/sports-histo...

1 of 5 If you care that #scotsfoundedfootball then take yourself along to tinyurl.com/2x6r453u The Historic Environment Scotland page which is ‘seeking your views on a proposal to designate the remains of First Hampden...’ This matters, for many reasons. Note that it is for ‘scheduling’.

I did a conference presentation about a year ago about community-owned infrastructure for library systems, a better alternative to pissing money away paying private companies, and one of the questions afterwards was "But how do you scale that?" My answer was, "You don't."

With support from OBC's Collective Development Fund, Professor Tilahun Shiferaw and his team at Haramaya University is transforming how Ethiopian universities understand and adopt open book access, through efforts from policy to multilingual publishing. #OpenAccess #AcademicSky Read his update 👇

Are you a doctoral researcher in Arts & Humanities in Scotland? Apply to showcase your research at our 2026 Research Showcase. ✨ ✔ Up to £1000 funding ✔ Creative formats welcome ✔ Open to all PhDs at SGSAH member institutions Apply by 27th March ⏳ 🔗 Full details: www.sgsah.ac.uk/about/news/h...

A landmark day today for the British Newspaper Archive, which has reached an astonishing 100 million pages with the addition of several years of the Dundee Courier. It is my go-to place for any kind of research, whether sport or genealogy. www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk

Interesting wee project on Hibs history, to write a biography of every player from the early years. I've enjoyed doing a few of these, more volunteers are needed! If you are interested, email is in the image.

Repair Manifesto: If we can't fix it, we don't own it. - Repair is better than recycling. - Repair saves us money. - Repair teaches basic engineering. - Repair saves the planet. - Repair connects people and things. - Repair is sustainable. #Minimalism

Stoat (formerly Revolt) is an open source Discord-like app that can host communities or can be installed on one's own virtual private server. stoat.chat

The Vue St Enoch strike is temporarily suspended until 17 February 2026 to test management's claim that the workers can achieve their aims through internal processes. We shall see. www.reddit.com/r/glasgow/co...

Closing soon ...

Lots of new radical history tours open for booking over the next few months including Queer Glasgow, radical West End and Migrants Made Glasgow. Free tickets always available if cost is a barrier, just drop us a line. See you in the streets! radicalglasgowtours.com

The sad thing is, every time I think about how critical Zotero is to me I remember that most users, even though it's also crucial to them, do not financially support the software (although they also "sell" synchronisation storage plans). We NEED to find a better way to support such infrastructures.

Feeling very

We are HIRING! The Open Library of Humanities is seeking a PhD student to assist with editorial, marketing and technical duties. The position is fully funded and open to funded PhD students at CHASE institutions. 📅 31/03: www.openlibhums.org/news/883/

🎉 We’re proud to be members of the newly launched Open Journals Collective! At OLH, we believe in community-led, non-profit diamond open access publishing. OJC is a big step toward a more equitable future for journals and the wider scholarly publishing ecosystem Read more 👇

📣 Call for Papers! Centre for Scottish and Celtic Studies Postgraduate Symposium | 28 May 2026 Theme: People, Place & Movement in the Celtic World 15-min papers, all methods welcome, hybrid (Glasgow/online). Submit by 2 March 2026 📧 [email protected]

Today's reading matter - at the National Library of Scotland. The very first book dedicated to football, published in 1866 by Samuel Beeton.

[CATCH UP] @kirahopkins.bsky.social shares her experiences of presenting to @forumforopen.bsky.social last year during #OAWeek Just one thread in a growing relationship between ourselves and #OpenAccess #Publishing in the Middle East & North Africa 🌱 Find out more 👉

New article on @malikalnasir.bsky.social's story here. Makes some interesting connections between UK and US. www.nuorigins.com/overcoming-t...

The earliest reference to blockprinting in Iran associates it with the "Banu Sasan," a perceived underclass of thieves/magicians who we now think are related to modern Romani. Some of the Arabic terms used for blockprinting may also be loaned from their language. www.bloomsbury.com/us/roma-in-t...

1 of 4 #scotsfoundedfootball You know how I am not overly interested in stats and who won what? It is because I focus on how Football mirrored society. Scottish Combination spread because it was the right time. I want to come back to the Glasgow Charity Cup and to whom the Committee gave grants.

“I learned from them very early that what one does with Nazis is kill them, I am not a pacifist.” Renfrew Christie South African scholar & antiapartheid activist archive.ph/TZ2Hs

Do you work in a UK HE library? Are you early-career? Would you like a sponsored place to attend the Copim Conference at the end of February? Find out how to apply for these sponsored places, which are offered in memory of our beloved friend and colleague, Elaine Sykes: buff.ly/sbU2eRP #OAbooks

Missing from the coverage of redundancies at Edinburgh: this was done in such a haphazard, uncoordinated way, there are now core teams who have gone from 5 people to 1 with no change in workload or pressure and huge loss in knowledge of institutional process. www.heraldscotland.com/news/2576321...

This is one of my favorite positive stories from Turkey: my latest, on @newscientist.com

Tile, 16th century Diyarbakır, Turkey. (Musée du Louvre)

4/365. Migraine superwolf.

1 of 5 #scotsfoundedfootball On my walk on Friday, I passed by Hampden Bowling Club. It looks fine, despite its impending closure. By the end of February, it will be no more. I have no idea what Glasgow City Council are going to do with it. That £150,000+ repair to the roof is not going away.

PLEASE KEEP SHARING - the press are listening "Dear BBC Radio Scotland, We are musicians from Scotland... there is one thing we share. It was BBC Radio Scotland late-night shows that gave our music a chance." Full letter: tr.ee/9uKS89 @angusrobertson.bsky.social @thesmia.bsky.social

🎯 Anthony Moser put it perfectly: But I am a hater, and I will not be polite. The machine is disgusting and we should break it. The people who build it are vapid shit-eating cannibals glorifying ignorance. I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself. anthonymoser.github.io/writing/ai/h...

Thanks @stephenpinfield.bsky.social for interviewing me about my book for the @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social podcast. newbooksnetwork.com/publishing-b...

Striking BL staff, struggling to pay their rent, advised to consider not giving presents this year, and interim CEO, Jeremy Silver, has the nerve to tell them they ‘don’t live in a real world’. Only 17% of staff guaranteed the Living Wage (£14.80 ph) suggests acute familiarity with the ‘real world’.

Employer: please embed sustainability into your teaching Employer: here’s a list of cool ways to use AI

Stuck for a Scottish football book as a Christmas present? My Who's Who contains comprehensive biographies of every one of the 615 internationalists who represented Scotland between 1872 and 1939. Every review on amazon is five stars! www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B...

Just a reminder that Aaron Swartz was threatened with 50 years of jail time for downloading public domain documents and meanwhile AI companies bulk download copyrighted works

#SaggSeason #SaggGenius #GordonParks #AChoiceOfWeapons #BoTD

⚪️ Make 7,787 articles Open Access ⚪️ Give one guy a fortune

“It doesn’t really matter which lens we look at Elsevier’s offers from. Whether it’s from cost of publishing, the amount of usage or the price according to the size of institution, their offers have always been vastly more expensive than the other publishers in comparison.”

Delighted that my debut novel will be published by Polygon in 2027 💘

I'm a pass on card catalogues, but I am all-in on making sure our physical collections not only remain strong, but are designed to encourage browsing. Despite what consultant-class trends in academic libraries will tell you, our patrons actually do want stacks in the library. We should listen.

I've said this before but 99% of complaints about library catalogues are actually complaints about Ex Libris Primo. A whole category of software is being tainted in users' minds because of one shitty product.

And again, dress up warm and bring your vuvuzelas... Aberdeen welcomes refugees, not racism! Stand up to racist bullies with music, colourful banners and messages of hope. All welcome. Sunday 16 November, 3pm, 130 Don Street, Old Aberdeen (Don Street House), AB24 1UY.

Come and support the wonderful Copim gang whilst I’m on maternity leave! Happy to answer any q’s about the role ☺️

3,900 Pages of Paul Klee’s Personal Notebooks Are Now Online, Highlighting His Bauhaus Teachings (1921–1931)

Carsie Blanton, everybody. 👑

Check out my interveiw on Talk Radio Europe about the worlds 1st Black International footballer Andrew Watson. I’m also talking about my new book 📕 “Searching for my Slave Roots” #MalikAlNasir #SearchingForMySlaveRoots #TalkRadioEurope #Slavery #Colonialism #Spain #Europe youtu.be/9ztQJbJDLf8?...

For those who are interested, I'll be at the Byres Road Market in Hillhead Library this Saturday (1st November) selling copies of my book Glasgow Uncovered as well as my prints, calendars and Christmas cards. It's open 11am until 4pm. Cont./ #glasgow #byresroad

No scabbing, please. Support your striking library workers.