New #OpenAccess book in the Cambridge Elements series: Absence in the #Archives by Ciara Breathnach www.cambridge.org/core/element... #History

Booker, Lauren; Bateman, Rebecca; Faulkhead, Shannon; Galassi, Monica; Garwood-Houng, Alana; Gissell, Tammi; et al. (2026). ATSILIRN Protocols – 30 Years On: Research Symposium Report. University of Technology Sydney. doi.org/10.71741/4py... #libraries

Bookings are still open for tonight - Monday 18 May at 6pm, Kambri Cultural Centre, ANU, Canberra for Peter Yu, Marija Taflaga and Joshua Black in conversation with me on Gold Standard: Remembering the Hawke Government. Free event. www.anu.edu.au/events/meet-... #ourANU via @ANUmedia

As a librarian, archivist, and historian, this is utter nonsense. Most materials - text, images, and sound are not in digital format and most are not catalogued or described in detail. Archives especially do not work that way.

*laughs in archivist* It always amuses me at how little historical material is actually not only digitized but also made available online compared to what lay people think.

Once a month I send a small art letter by post 💌 A signed A5 print from one of my seasonal paintings and a short note from my studio 🌷 If you’d like to receive one too, join the Blooming Letter Club (Link in bio) www.verakober.com/mail-club

My flower painting 🌹

Hallucinated citations are polluting the scientific literature. What can be done? www.nature.com/articles/d41...

If you like data, or making things with textile crafts (sewing, knitting, crochet, weaving, etc.), I've finally written something up about data visualization with textiles. More words coming over the next few months! #DHmakes

12 research #libraries launched the Statement of Shared Practice on #AI Training Requests and Unique Cultural Collections

Starting work soon on a new 3 year book project. People keep asking me if I’ll use AI to help me? I would rather wear a hornet’s nest for underpants than ever delegate thought to a plagiarism engine

I'm launching a newsletter. It's called The Process is the Point. It's about library metadata and the forces that shape it. Sign up here: buttondown.com/lissertations

I am genuinely sick to death of pretending this is somehow normal or expected. If you use LLMs to do any part of your writing, thinking or synopses (let alone art) you should be embarrassed and out of work.

This is a great list of techniques for getting real information out of a Google search and avoiding AI slop and paid results. (One thing not included is that if you add "-ai" to a search, you block the AI summary) cardcatalogforlife.substack.com/p/google-has...

Glorious valley 💙#bluemountains

A new study reveals what we’ve long known… #libraries are good for you, and the community benefits of libraries consistently outweigh the costs. Research from NSW www.sl.nsw.gov.au/about/about-...

Fake references make Waite’s job as a librarian “so much harder,” she added. “I expect this on the wider internet, but not in reputable scientific journals,” she told us. “…It’s really worrying.” retractionwatch.com/2026/03/06/l... #medlibs

…&, most recently, - Degrades not just trust in, but the ability to critically engage w/, determine the value of, categorize, and intentionally sincerely consider new ways of organizing & understanding facts to produce knowledge. That is, overreliance on "gen AI" breaks down critical thinking skills

Authoritarians love "Gen AI" because it - Sounds confident even when factually wrong - Broadly conforms to & reproduces their biases, off the shelf - Lets them create bespoke realities (text, audio, moving & still image) which agree w/ their biases - Degrades trust in knowledge/evidence/expertise…

This is what we are dealing with as reference archivists. A complete fabrication of the archive. www.whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com/news/gemini-...

"With Nexus, Clarivate are essentially integrity-washing synthetic text, giving it an academic sheen without any academic rigour." www.hughrundle.net/does-clariva...

Research has shown the significant hidden toll of poor office design on productivity, health and employee retention.

Jon Kudelka, much-loved Australian political cartoonist, dies aged 53

I also love that you can see me in my dumb straw hat reflected in its eye 👀👀👀

Digital Preservation Coalition’s (DPC) Novice to Know-How (N2KH) training provides a structured learning pathway to build confidence and practical skills #DigitalPreservation

Librarians are wonderful. “Use AI to explore. Use libraries to verify. Use your brain to evaluate.”

“AI models not only point some users to false sources but also cause problems for researchers and librarians, who end up wasting their time looking for requested nonexistent records…”

comparia.beta.gouv.fr is so awesome for AI literacy - it makes it so easy to get a sense of different models, rate their responses on accuracy etc, then see what the models were and how they compare, plus the carbon footprint of your queries (as on the screenshot) #FF2025

I wish a notice like this wasn't necessary. www.icrc.org/en/article/i...

To propose that GenAI can compensate for "archival silences" perverts Trouillot's work. It's is a contradiction to say that a product whose logic exacerbates power imbalances--creating a most-likely guess based on the existing record--can restore absences that are the product of those imbalances.

When David Alejandro Sánchez Gómez photographed this orchid in Colombia, he didn't know how special it would turn out to be. 🧵⤵️

Sydney Water has estimated up to 250 megalitres a day will be needed to service datacentres planned by 2035, more than Canberra's entire drinking water. Second feature with @petrastock.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Somebody asked about this on another platform – and I'm once again grateful to libraries for reinvigorating anti-algorithmic means of discovery :)

New from 404 Media: ChatGPT told a violent stalker to continue running his misogynistic and threat-filled podcast despite the “haters,” and to visit more gyms to find women. The man stalked women in multiple states, including touching and following from work www.404media.co/chatgpt-spot...

Everything #GideonHaigh says. The unrepentant carelessness and spiritual emptiness of the library’s decision makers (and the government that put them there) is jawdropping: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

I have a lifelong connection to Victoria’s state library – which is why I am aghast at its crude self-lobotomy | Gideon Haigh

Flock accidentally exposed training materials and a panel which tracked what its AI annotators were working on. It showed that Flock, which has cameras in thousands of U.S. communities, is using workers in the Philippines to review and classify footage.

Can AI be ethical and transparent? At READ-COOP, the unique European cooperative behind Transkribus, we prioritise democratic control and purpose over profit. Read Melissa Terras' (@melissaterras.bsky.social) thoughts on why this model is a global blueprint:  blog.transkribus.org/en/melissa-t...

I recorded a video for my #slvresidency on hacking the SLV website. It talks about looking beneath the hood of #glam websites to try and imagine alternatives & fix problems. https://lab.slv.vic.gov.au/resources/hack-website-video-tim-sherratt #libraries #digitalhumanities

If you want to know more about how we built the cooperative that supports @transkribus.bsky.social, and how coops are a way to actually operationalise responsible AI, then please read our paper, which was the basis of my talk. This is about community open-research-europe.ec.europa.eu/articles/5-16

Would I could find a fine frog!

Woohoo! Great #digipres story @makethecatwise https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20251009-rescuing-knowledge-trapped-on-old-floppy-disks

Australian orchids suffer rapid pollination decline since the 1970s, study suggests www.abc.net.au/news/science...

We have improved our links with the Allmaps project, so that any of our maps can be freely, collaboratively georeferenced and then brought back into our Georeferenced Maps viewer 🗺️ Learn more > maps.nls.uk/view/help/ #Georeference #MapMonday #Maps

Hey! My post about my #slvresidency made it into the Editor's Choice section of the latest @DHNow: https://digitalhumanitiesnow.org

📢 This looks like a great opener for the upcoming @ihr.bsky.social Digital History Seminar - "Digitising Death: Gender, Genealogy, and the Experimental Recovery of Women’s Histories in Early Modern Ireland" 👉 21 Oct, 5.30 pm, online, FREE www.history.ac.uk/news-events/...

Library of Congress has a really good planning framework: libraryofcongress.github.io/labs-ai-fram...

Everything Open 2026 is Coming to Canberra! The three day conference will have presentations on a range of open technologies topics from community members and project leaders. Call for Sessions is now open 🧑‍🏫. If you have something to speak about submit your proposals today!