I stepped off the library dean path when it became clear that this would be the job--managing the end of academic libraries as we know them. Please know that these changes are just a result of defunding. They do not herald some bright digital future. There will just be less access to knowledge.

Not me crying at the Higher Education Sector Conference 2026 due to solidarity feelings

When we have lost all these universities it will be very difficult to replace - and staff - them again.

University administrators two years ago: we can’t allow social justice movements to change the university as we know it University administrators today: in order to accommodate the new probabilistic bullshit generator no one likes we must change everything about the university

Libraries are not just knowledge repositories, though it’d be enough if that’s all academic libraries did. We create the conditions for knowledge production across campus, and also create knowledge in our own right. A uni cannot function without a healthy, well funded, appropriately staffed library

It feels like everyone not only has lost their goddamned minds, but has just reached in and voluntarily scooped them out.

Advert from Instagram. Librarians of a certain vintage will be immediately triggered.

STOP TELLING ME AI IS THE FUTURE OH MY GOD

With 99p print credit left after finishing my degree, I printed in A3 size the creepiest photo of Ainsley Harriot that Google had and stuck it on the inside back of a men's toilet cubicle door in Strathclyde Uni library's second floor lav. Sorry to the next person to see Ainsley.

Jesus Christ

Oh no, this is going to seriously impact my current AI budget of (Checks notes) Absolutely fucking zero www.theverge.com/ai-artificia...

Honestly I'm exhausted

Let's go #UCU26

I am back in Yorkshire

if i was going to give a college commencement speech i would make sure to start with something the students could rally behind. something like "we will mechanically suck the youth from your bones to feed a mechanical eschaton, which my generation will use to climb heaven and become new gods"

Hmm

'Vice-chancellors and senior managers have been complicit in this hollowing out....Rather, they pursue the logic of the market to its conclusion....They normalise the closure of subjects once central to universities in the name of “competitive portfolios”.' Excellent analysis here. 4/4

'The emphasis by politicians and regulators on graduate employment data has reinforced the idea that higher education is primarily a financial investment....Rather than protecting breadth of intellectual enquiry, regulation has narrowed it by amplifying market pressures.' 3/4

'many polytechnics...sought to widen access to the humanities by developing their own provision. Indeed, the conversion of polytechnics into universities in 1992 was justified in part by the principle that a general intellectual education should not be the preserve of a narrow elite.' 2/4

'The University of Hertfordshire’s decision to “suspend” five humanities undergraduate courses is a further stark warning about how readily higher education has jettisoned its former commitment to such subjects.' 1/4

THE POPE IS QUOTING GANDALF!!!

Who is Christopher Olah, the 33-year-old Pope Whisperer? - Anthropic Co-Founder. - Thiel Fellow. - EA Poster Boy. - Useful Idiot Participating in the Destruction of Higher Ed. 80000hours.org/podcast/epis...

Another glorious example of people not even doing the most basic proofing.

Once again I'm forced to ask: do people not glance at things they produce before publishing them? Do they not take one second to scan the largest words on the image?

Do the people producing this stuff not look at it? Do they not glance at it but once with their human eyes and see how unacceptable it is to use as a learning resource?

"You probably hope you can fall back to sleep in a few minutes, but I assure you, you cannot. I’m about to turn it up. I’ve got some buddies out here to rip off a cacophony, and we don’t take harmonization lightly. We live by the song, die by the song."

the pope's encyclical is immediately superior to anything i have seen any librarian write about AI because it focuses on human dignity. having 0 human dignity, and actively degrading the dignity of others, is a fundamental precursor to advancing professional in the 21st century university

Reviewers in two groups were given identical resumes for Emily Clarke and James Clarke and told they had used AI. Emily's was 2x as likely to raise doubts about competence. "She can't even write a CV herself." But James "just needed a bit of help." fortune.com/2026/05/10/i...

TL;DR — there are no permanent jobs in academia, and those there are are disappearing.

I think it's extremely important that folk let go of prior notions of what they saw as the "managerial class" or whatever and recognise this as a move to undermine the ability of the entire workforce to understand what is going on in a business and therefore organise effectively

Only if we show up and support them and their work—they are not our heroes or saviors. They are humans.

Before when I wasn't paid enough at work it was because of a system of discrimination that only values mens labour. This system can be dismantled & destroyed. Now when I'm not paid enough at work it's because of the immutable characteristics of my sex. That cannot be changed. That is somehow law.

Anyway here’s the passage of Judith Butler that the Guardian censored years ago

On the one-year anniversary of EMPIRE OF AI, I am so, so excited to announce The AI Resist List, a new project that documents examples of resistance to the AI empires around the world 😍 airesistlist.org

This was extremely great. I put a load of veg on after this to do something with tomorrow. Making the most of the good weather! (Alt text 1: duck legs, plums and cabbage on a barbecue. Alt text 2: a garden table with two plates of rice, duck and cabbage, a messy chopping board with a knife)

Counterpoint: No I will not

Equality is not conditional. Dignity at work is not negotiable. The EHRC Code of Practice has been published. UCU is examining it urgently. This is a significant and unsettling moment and we will not leave branches to navigate it alone. www.ucu.org.uk/article/1451...

To my library colleagues who went all-in on AI: we told you so. We told you they would use technology you were training to replace us. We told you that it wouldn't matter to admin if AI couldn't do even a fraction of our job. And you dismissed us.

Every trans-supporting cis person in the UK needs to make peace with becoming more annoying, persistent, and pedantic than they ever thought possible. EHRC guidance is full of contradictions - they're relying on transphobic compliance out of fear. DON'T GIVE IT TO THEM

Yes, @amlibraryassoc.bsky.social, pls explain including an AI vendor exhibitor with the marketing: “intelligent enough to not need a trained librarian”? This association's entire purpose is to support + advocate for librarians, & this is not that. See aischoollibrarian.substack.com/p/why-is-ala...

“necessarily have negative attitudes” my brother in casuistry THOSE ARE THE NEGATIVE ATTITUDES

Imagine if the EHRC came out with guidance that said it was ok to discriminate against a disabled person if the presence of that person made someone else feel uncomfortable

Oh it’s coming in public libraries too. Our administration recently hired an ‘AI specialist’ and we appear to be going all in on AI. (And all the ppl making these decisions have library degrees, btw.) I hate it here.

Something notable to me about the policy is the carve out for finding information I wonder if that's something they think is an acceptable use - or of it is an acknowledgement that half the available scholarly platforms have already forced AI search on us and we've little local power to stop it 📚

Amazing how everyone saying "this is bad" has something like 'AI czar' in their LinkedIn title

Microsoft is letting Office users remove an annoying Copilot button

This technology has the politics of slavery denialism. If you don't like that depiction, refuse it until such problems are definitively fixed. (Nobody knows how.) The escalating rhetoric of forced adoption lays bare the stakes. Find coliberation in refusal.

Technology has politics. It doesn't matter what the developer intended, it matters what the product is and what it does. The global infrastucture of capitalism has been mobilized to jam racist asbestos into every crevice of society.

Hateful hateful shit