An upcoming leadership webinar about teamwork lists “viral” as a trait of a great teammate. I don’t want viral teammates. I want them to stay home and take a sick day.

My eye is twitching. I may be more stressed than I think I am.

Higher ed folks, advocate for academic libraries and, more importantly, library staff. We aren’t okay.

If you hate print books and want a ringside seat to witness their ongoing destruction as a cultural medium, maybe consider becoming a librarian

JOB POSTING! Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Rare Books and Prints at the @folger.edu amherst.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/FSL_Em...

Still looking for help with this!

Here is a nice tile floor.

Yo, I’m dead 💀

I’m trying to mute words/names, and do I actually have to account for punctuation variants like name+comma, name+period, etc.? Can I use regex?

JOB POSTING! 📚📜 Catalog/Metadata Librarian (Arabic Language) at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University The salary range is $68,000—$145,250 (depending on experience). careers.yale.edu/us/en/job/13...

I’d believe in elves too if I lived on a magical landscape of naturally boiling water that explodes and bubbles from the ground.

Between 7:00 AM and 7:00 PM should not be allowable as a scheduled service window. It’s like when job ads say between $1 and $100K as a salary range if they are required to include a range.

I’ve officially reached the point where I can’t tell if someone is sharing AI nonsense, a “Black Mirror Episode”, something real, or some combination of those possibilities. Blurring reality into meaninglessness is the goal, I suppose.

LCNAF & Trie – Storing +11M unique names in 50MB data structure in the browser thisismattmiller.com/post/lcnaf-t... - Optimizing LCNAF authorized headings into a trie data structure - In browser MARC file name reconciliation + search tool - OpenRefine / Command line tools for reconciliation

If anybody would like to, or knows anybody who might like to, do a small amount of paid research work for me at the National Records of Scotland in Edinburgh, I would be very glad to hear from them.

I think I saw the northern lights. My phone photos look vaguely green. The light pollution where I live is so bad that I can never tell what is happening in the sky :(

Every time someone’s like “put that in the louvre,” my head now goes “and then steal it from the louvre, the security password is louvre”

Does anyone in the #bookhistory or #history space know of a good article about the “publishing war” between the Old Farmer’s Almanac and the Farmer’s Almanac?

Are there any catalogers/libraries with documentation for cataloging tarot decks using MARC? I’m writing documentation for our collection and want to make sure that I’m following best practices. I know about Yale’s documentation, but it’s focused on historical playing cards.

I’m a BlueSky elder, but today is the first time that I detached quote reposts and blocked an account. So not interested in arguing about unethical startups. Also reported a scammy Kickstarter campaign for intellectual property theft. I’m not the one today.

Happy There Is A Circulatory System Walking Through The Kitchen Day to all who celebrate.

Loving today's news that the mysterious "fedora man" outside the Louvre heist was actually a 15-year-old museum visitor who dresses like a 1940s French detective all the time, just because. apnews.com/article/louv...

This code will be active until Monday morning. Get in there!

Thinking more about today’s book fair feelings, I am taking those feelings as a sign that I’ve reached a healthy place in my career. Rare books and librarianship aren’t who I am. I take my work seriously, but it isn’t my identity.

At the ABAA Boston Book Fait and it feels weird to not be looking for anything. Neither for my institution or myself. Not bad just weird.

Oh, yes they did!

If you're an open digital zines girly (of any gender), upload your zines to Internet Archive, not Issuu or whatever, for stability and accessibility

So much this. When employees constantly interact with me like that, I assume that I am being closely monitored. Anyhow, I will continue not shopping at Target.

I appreciate closed captioning mis-captioning the embryo selection startup Herasight’s name as “Parasite” in this annoying news segment.

I love that the Boston cop slide never got fixed and now people just willingly go down it in tribute. It’s basically a national landmark at this point

'Textured Stories’: The crêpe-paper books that brought Japanese culture to Western readers 📜 news.yale.edu/2025/11/06/t...

After more than 200 years in print, the 2026 Farmers’ Almanac will mark its final edition. www.farmersalmanac.com/fond-farewel...

Just found out about this amazing example of #manuscript #recycling . The whole manuscript is made up from the margins of an earlier liturgical manuscript, cut out and rearranged (hence the unusual format), the (mostly) blank margins then used to copy various magical texts in the mid 16th century.

For the past decade, I've been slowly cooking a small and humble book. Part (alternative) history, part analysis, and part social critique, this is a look at what games also are and have always been. ZEN AND SLOW GAMES Out 20/1/2026 by MIT Press mitpress.mit.edu/978026255356...

I feel like I am overreacting because I am unhappy with assigning the LCSH term “Sexual minorities”. The Homosaurus documentation backs up my concerns, but I’m doubting myself now.

Increasingly the Venn diagram of my intellectual interests & commitments—digital humanities, book history/bibliography, book arts, critical making—perhaps meet in the region "Luddite Humanities" Not technological rejection—but slower, deliberate, critical, historicized engagement with technology

And the type form.

New print in honor of Studs and my neighbors standing up to protect our communities. #letterpress www.starshaped.com/8x10prints/o...

When a new Red Line train approaches, I get so excited. I’m like a small child, internally yelling, “Yay, new train!” I don’t understand being against or afraid of public transportation.

The Majestic Theatre, 1906.

Jacob Lawrence, "The 1920s: The Migrants Arrive & Cast Their Ballots," screenprint, 1974 noma.org/election-day...

Good thing there is not a storm this week. www.bostonglobe.com/2025/11/04/m...

goodmenproject.com/featured-con... Mt Auburn is a really special place, and their volunteers that track #phenology and other phenomena are really special people!

The Amazon Dash Wand was almost this. They sucked me in with the promise that I would easily scan items into my grocery order. My order would arrive while I listened to smooth jazz on my smart speaker—just as the lights dimmed to evening mode. Sadly, all lies.

I hate gay Halloween what do you mean you’re an uncataloged book someone tried to rebind with duct tape

It's Halloween AKA THE SPOOKIEST and our last Flytrap Friday post is up at @theflytrapmedia.com: @tinavasquez.bsky.social on Halloween villaging, a fascinating subculture that was so cool to learn about.

Do you take snapshots of your everyday life as a physical scientist? @aip.bsky.social is soliciting photos from scientists at all career stages and disciplines from around the world to broaden its 30 000+ photo collection, which is used frequently by historians. #physics #astronomy #histSTM

Whatever your plans tonight — cemetery stroll, movie marathon, or just snacking on your kid’s candy — we hope you have a safe and happy Halloween! We’ll be cozying up with Adrian Dannatt's selected obituaries celebrating the obscure and eccentric, "Doomed and Famous," published by Sequence Press.

Library (archives, research) folk, could you give me your best one liners about Why Cataloguing Matters, please? Because sometimes 'Without cataloguing no-one can find or use the stuff' just isn't enough, although it clearly should be. Thank you very. #GLAM #archives #rarebooks #metadata 📚

Amazon is helping fund a $300 million build of a ballroom for the White House. Independent bookstores are donating to food banks and organizations that help with food insecurity. They are not the same.