Saw someone say, “Stop hoarding books, we don’t need paper books anyway” and I can’t express how misguided this is. Online libraries disappear, digital books can be altered, and with Big Tech seeking to destroy history and literacy, print media has never been more essential.

This would be why I am such a strident critic of digitization as a substitute for actual archival preservation. My sixteenth century documents are far sturdier and likely to survive another 500 years than the detritus on the internet. And digitization is not democratization.

Saturday afternoon, amidst the doom scrolling: a good book, a cat, and my favorite John Prine t-shirt (my only John Prine t-shirt, but still my favorite)

Also great! "That's why I think we should fund libraries more. It's not just because they're a great resource, it's because I don't wanna know what librarians will do if we don't give them a place to go."

Good morning from already flooded Milwaukee

A friend of mine wrote a book about the history of film censorship in Milwaukee and it's being turned into a documentary! The filmmaker needs at least 250 people to follow the project at the link below to ensure it will be available streaming. Donating is great too if you can do so!

One of my favorite digital collections! I created this back when I got to do this kind of thing, and almost a decade later, the local NPR station interviewed my former colleague about it.

I tested it in Primo Research Assistant, not surprising, I got similar results since Summon Research Assistant is sister product and both work the same by using LLM to generate Boolean search strategy. Gaza war shows no results. Tusla Race riots get a scary error message but does generate answer(1)

Terrific thread, with wonderful specific detail, about why historiography matters.

the kind of guy who has not been inside a library since the 90s

Second day with this incredibly needy foster kitty. Here he is screaming at me as I try to leave the room. I love him.

A lesson in de-escalation from Archie: when your opponent is ready to attack and pops up to strike, just start making out with him.

What is common knowledge in your field but shocks outsiders? Digital resources, particularly eBooks and audiobooks, are going to bankrupt libraries if something isn't done to halt the extortionary pricing models of publishers.

We're honored to be recognized by our local freekly, The Shepherd-Express, as their "heroes" of the month. shepherdexpress.com/news/hero-of... #freekly #freeweeklypaper #localpress #milwaukee

Archie and I have been reading together again

Programmers who rely on chatgpt are explicitly saying they are *not thinking about the code* They're not making mental models of it, understanding how the parts work, where the problems might be. All this also applies to literally all creative activity, from art to writing.

My cat, an idiot, was scared of the sound of rain in the living room, so he ran into another room and hid next to a window.

“Massive numbers of students are going to emerge from university with degrees, and into the workforce, who are essentially illiterate…Both in the literal sense and in the sense of being historically illiterate and having no knowledge of their own culture, much less anyone else’s.”

He's training to become an architect.

Milwaukee, 2025 end of an era…

As a person who repairs books, I counsel people on this all the time: the default for physical objects, if left alone, is to continue existing. The default for digital files, if left alone, is to disappear. Digital history requires care FOREVER; one missed reformatting and good luck recovering it

Archie is looking regal this morning

#ICYMI folks w/deep experience re:crisis web archiving (@sucho-org.bsky.social)+building tools for it (@webrecorder.net) made a free zine teaching how anyone can archive the things you love on the web before they go away: zinebakery.com/homemade-zin... & why you shouldn't expect others will do so

the boat is all of us

A friend of mine has been sending me photos lately comparing my cat Sal to the Milwaukee Brewers player Sal Frelick (aka Sal Furlick)

It's a good thing this ding dong doesn't have to hunt for his food.

We got this delightful package in the mail at my library today. Timeless!

This weekend's read is The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by @sgj.bsky.social. I've been looking forward to this one, and Archie hasn't gotten in the way even once (although he did bite it, which means he likes it).

I got a new rug for the bedroom over a month ago, and the cats are still losing their minds over it.

Not that we in the library wish to encourage profanity, but if you want to get rid of these AI-search summaries (which are often absolute nonsense), just swear in your search terms. It really works.

everyone: wow being a librarian is so cool you just get to read books all day your local librarian: today I had to break up a knife fight in the encyclopedia section

Archie and I are again trying to read a book together.

Trying to read this morning

"If someone puts condominiums on the lakefront, I hope they fall into the lake." My favorite quote so far from some research I'm doing. Letter to the editor, Milwaukee Journal, 1979

Got the Milwaukee Rec Dept class schedule in the mail today. My top two faves for this spring (based solely on name): The Birds Are Back and Yoko Ono - Artist, Icon, Messenger, Muse

"Furthermore, the transition to subscription-only access represents more than a change in purchasing models – it fundamentally undermines the ability of academic libraries to build collections that serve their specific institutional needs."

RUSSEL SPROUT. Perfect name, crinkly ears. Someone go get this guy.

Oh, you're in an important meeting? What if I lie behind you like this and yell for attention the whole time?

Microsoft study finds AI makes human cognition “atrophied and unprepared” 🔗 www.404media.co/microsoft-st...

my public library is releasing some archival footage recently processed and catalogued in honor of Black History Month, check out this oral history project filmed in 1991 featuring interviews with Black Milwaukeeans! content.mpl.org/digital/coll...

Reconstruction failed because a bunch of white supremacists were enabled by Andrew Johnson who hamstrung any effort to hold the former Confederates accountable and refused to provide protection and support for freed slaves.

Fantastic portraits of my guys from the volunteer artists working the Wisconsin Humane Society's Poorly Drawn Pets fundraiser

I'm just about finished reading "Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell," which I highly recommend, and the last few chapters feel especially ominous today.

I once had a professor ask “Why is there a Business section in the newspaper but not a Labor section?” My classmates and I probably rolled our eyes, but damned if I haven’t remembered that question every few days for 30 years now.

You think the article is about an obscure rebellion about grain prices, but then someone really smart shows you that it's about what it means to be human among other humans—questions you never suspected anyone would ever put words to—and you can't ever see the world the same way.

Getting emails about Black Friday deals on GRE tests is making this holiday season feel even more dystopian than it already did

While I was on a zoom call with my parents and sister earlier, I watched my sister hold up her phone to show my mom a photo, and my mom asked to hold the phone, and my sister said no without any hesitation.