This is why I get so happy over Christmas - it's not the mince pies or the carols or the family time or the presents. It's completely unplugging from social media for two weeks, and so temporarily avoiding keeping up with this sort of thing. It makes me so aghast. ⤵️

I love stuff like this and don't really know why

Cowlpool Karaoke

I don't know what I've done to the library Instagram account's algorithm, but the ENTIRE FEED is delicious things to do with puff pastry. I'm drowning in increasingly avant-garde festive mini-tartlet ideas. They all look great - but I can't have puff pastry every night forever. Send help.

This is how I was greeted upon returning from my run 😄

Me reading this: Wow this is incredible. I'll raise a glass to Tom Stoppard tonight, and tell Grace about how her life was saved by a play Also me: 'Stoppard never learnt how many lives he saved...' - well whose fault is that, Prof Baum?! Don't wait till he dies to tell everyone! Just email him!

This 2024 equivalent of this went down really well. It's an interactive advent calendar pointing at library resources, made by my team - I am biased but I think it's great! 🎁📚

Grace communicating her displeasure at the tooth fairy forgetting its duties for the second night in a row 😄

A slide from my (otherwise very practical) video marketing workshop for UKeIG today... 📚

Can't stop thinking about this quote, from @maggietokudahall.bsky.social. "Fascism and AI, whether or not they have the same goals, they sure are working to accelerate one another." (Read the full article here: www.404media.co/ai-is-superc...)

Clippy-saying-it-looks-like-you’re-about-to-commit-a-crime.jpg

What could go wrong? The software, used by school libraries as catalogs, added new features including “AI-driven automation and contextual risk analysis,” which includes “sensitive material marker” & a “traffic-light risk ratings” system. www.404media.co/ai-is-superc...

Alice made eyeball jelly last night - is this not the worst thing you’ve ever seen

This remains the only user-facing-context in which I've ever used the words 'Boolean Logic'... 📚 (or in this case boooooolean logic!)

Bluesky, help me out... What would you do about a totally fabricated quote attributed to you in a journal article? I suspect the author has used GenAI to research their article and it just made this (frankly tortuous) quote up - the article it cites is from 2013! I had no concept of GenAI then.

First favourite tree klaxon!

Registrations close tonight for my Alternatives to PowerPoint course with UKeIG! www.cilip.org.uk/events/Event... Thursday lunchtime. We'll look mainly at the interactive Menti, the divisive Prezi, the massively underrated Sway, and Google Slides (with its useful Q&A feature), should be good.

The second clip looks like it's sped up but it isn't, I'm just holding my phone upside down so the camera lens is almost touching the water...

Ooof. As someone who used to live on the Foss in one of the houses shown on the right of this picture (albeit many years earlier than the story below) I remember the feeling well of dragging everything draggable upstairs when the floods got bad... It was not relaxing!

If you were watching a video, for CPD purposes, perhaps at your desk or during a lunch hour, what would make it more or less likely to work well for you? I'm doing two videos for some libraries and I'm keen to make them as useful and engaging as possible, would love your thoughts on what you like! 🧵

The welcome is back! 📚

*First misty picturesque run of the season klaxon*

Flashback to the time in Venice we saw a bloke who looked just like my dad who was dressed in the exact same outfit as my Dad, walking just behind my Dad

Picked my Dad up from hospital yesterday after a minor procedure to correct an issue with his tear ducts, and he was telling me how brilliant everyone was throughout. He just texted me: "The NHS would move me to tears if I still had any!" It's a good line...

This is so well written that I read it even though I am on annual leave and not thinking about libraries today

I really love the work our Student Curators do at York. They have a budget for new materials, they create both physical and digital displays, and they pour their passion into their projects. Here's one which has just gone live, take a look. 📚

Just two-factor-authenticated into an online training module about the different coloured fire extinguishers. I'd love to see the journey-mapping for the fraud this is preventing... 'So, they've successfully stolen your username and password. They immediately do your overdue Fire Safety Training'

International cat day is it? Slap a Parental Advisory sticker on this pic I took of Shnoops and MegaCat and it’s basically an album cover.

You’ll find this book in our ‘Accountability’ section.

Was genuinely disappointed to go onto warwick.ac.uk the other day and find they’d replaced the main homepage link so it’s no longer ‘find out more about our brand’ - this makes up for it a little.

This is well worth reading

They should do an update on Knight Rider that shows David Hasselhoff's character chronically unable to drive safely or accurately without KITT's assistance, to counter this argument from Zuckerberg which I think - hear me out - may be inaccurate

In case you missed it yesterday, mega-thread about the issues with Imposter Syndrome, its possible frequent misdiagnosis, and Trespasser Syndrome being an important alternative.

New post on how we use #ImposterSyndrome when perhaps we mean #TrespasserSyndrome. 📚 My colleague Raj Mann introduced me to this new term and I can't get it out of my head. I think 'Imposter Syndrome' is a potentially harmful term we should stop misusing in Higher Ed, libraries & elsewhere... 🧵>>

The librarian who works in me may be timid and shy, or may be imposingly strict, but in either case will have (inexplicably) read every single one of the ancient tomes I contain, and will be happy to cross-reference their contents from memory in time-sensitive situations.

Hi, I'm a library in a film. There are no computers in me, or indeed any books published in the last 200 years, but there are many individual desk lamps plus an antique globe. My books are stored with a dizzying degree of verticality, and can only be reached via those little sliding shelf-ladders.

I just verified my age by singing a pitch-perfect rendition of the music (including sirens) from the 'YOU WOULDN'T STEAL A CAR' copyright piracy-is-a-crime ad that used to be unskippable on all DVDs sold in the UK

Just reposting this to the library 📚 feed, in case there are other social media admin people who, like me, assumed age verification was going to be a long drawn-out nightmare, trying to prove to Bluesky that your org was founded before 2008... bsky.app/profile/uoyl...

Updating a classic warwick.ac.uk

It feels like the whole of #HigherEd is talking about the Warwick rebrand, and I do feel a bit sorry for them, but you know, we need to collectively let off steam as our Govt collectively thumbs-up the sight of our entire industry slipping into the sea, and THIS page really will bring you *joy* ⤵️

She’s not allowed on the table but when there’s a table *on* the table (due to floor mopping) she sees it as a loophole Ps she and MegaCat are TWO TODAY 🎂🎉🥳

This is an absolute case study in how people (well, organisations mainly) misuse the word ‘brand’… - your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room - what they’re saying is nothing good, in this case - that’s ironic isn’t it - you can never control the brand

I remember when the phrase 'a solution in search of a problem' used disparagingly: a short-hand for fatuous ideas. Now it's government policy. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

£45,000 - £50,000 per year, depending on experience and country of residence.

I’ve cancelled 365 recently and got this (which I ignored), I cancelled Evernote and got offered a 70% discount or some such (which I ignored); I’ve got to get into bluffing on things I don’t actually want to cancel for the offers… So much AI being bundled into make things pricier and also worse.

It’s my mum’s 81st birthday and my dad has taken her away on a surprise trip somewhere, and they’ve just sent me this photo from wherever it is they’ve gone, and they’re just SO happy together it gladdens my heart ❤️

If you've worked on a library project to showcase ethnically minoritised authors, and you've received recommendations for books from students and staff (and you see this today or over the weekend...) I'd love to hear from you. We're buying some books on a tight deadline! Some more context below. 📚

She literally RAN when she saw me coming to start work, in order to get my work chair and lie down on it and instantly settle down to sleep

Sometimes you do training or consultancy online and it pains you because the place you’re doing it for is so beautiful and / or in an amazing location, and today is one of those days - Trinity College Dublin, but via Teams (the least beautiful location of them all) 😭😭