For decades, a cacophony of technological prophets has repeatedly proclaimed the impending end of the paper era. But here we still are, a paper-using humankind. @agnesgehbald.bsky.social and me wrote an article about paper in global book cultures. #paperhistory is #bookhistory, #globalhistory 1/3

This report is how I have channeled my rage as the tech industry has grown in wealth and power at the expense of workers, communities, and the environment. The old mechanisms of reform aren’t sufficient in a time of AI ascendance and data center accelerationism datasociety.net/library/turn...

#NewAcq: the #poem 'Jeroentje 9 voor, 9 na' by Jan Vanhaelen (1972). The text, on little sheets of paper, has been added to a jar of pickled gherkins. 🫙 🥒🥒🥒 Don't say: a nightmare for our preservation department. Do say: an creative literary experiment! EHC Antwerp 910872 📚💙 📖 📜

I shared Ted Chiang's "ChatGPT Is a Blurry JPEG of the Web" with students for an extra credit opportunity. Not one of them found it odd that a photocopier would alter the image it has been tasked with reproducing. ?!

Have you thought about submitting something to JITP but your idea didn’t quite fit with our themed issues? Submit to our **GENERAL ISSUE** by December 15th and show us how you think about the intersection of teaching, learning, and research with technology. See you in our inbox!

Reading Rooms at the British Library are closed *all week* because so many of its workers refuse to work for pitiful wages in a contemptuously authoritarian and obliviously managed environment. We need leaders who get it and are big enough to sort it out! It’s a mess and a disgrace. Lift it up!!

Post-doc applications for next year's seminar on "Translation" at Rutgers' Center for Cultural Analysis are "live"! The seminar will be co-ed by Preetha Mani and Jeff Lawrence. Fellow academics: let your early-career colleagues, students, and former students know! jobs.rutgers.edu/postings/263...

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

Today @natmcgartland.bsky.social, PhD candidate in English at the University of Maryland, spoke to us about data representation through textiles. From Jacquard loom punch cards to crochet patterns to paper weaving, Nat showed us that weaving & textile work has always been a form of data practice 🧶📊

I was lucky to have Milan Terlunen join my Intro to Digital Humanities class today to discuss his work with Sierra Eckert tracking which parts of Middlemarch get most quoted, and why. Read their article: muse.jhu.edu/pub/3/articl...

I curated some readings for class on "data tensions" and the list felt worth sharing. Come on a tour of datasets, books, the web, and AI with me... We'll start with this piece on the Google Books project: the hopes, dreams, disasters, and aftermath of building a public library on the internet. 1/n

I’m just never going to sign on to an idea for fixing [insert here: higher ed, your field, classroom, university, library] that adds more labor. *Reduce* labor. Supplant labor. Waste it. What would happen if you had more time to [insert here: think, read, stare, cook, sleep, muse, exercise]?

The Post45 Data Collective invites graduate students in the humanities or adjacent fields to explore cultural data reflexively and collaboratively in a mini-workshop hosted virtually on Friday, March 13. Details here: data.post45.org/news/grad-wo...

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

What are the risks—and opportunities—of drawing close to one's objects of study as a feminist scholar? Alix Beeston reflects on her experience of writing a critical–creative account of women and girls in photography history. @alixbeeston.bsky.social Open access now: doi.org/10.1525/fmh....

Holy shit, just learned about the typewriter art of Montserrat Alberich Escardívol, a Catalan typist. Using an extra wide typewriter and 180 color ribbons, she built up elaborate images from simple characters like 'm' and '.' and ';'. Here is her typewritten painting of the Cathedral of Barcelona.

The four-year-old is having an absolute meltdown about going to bed. “I HATE how the earth SPINS!! EVERY DAY it’s night to day night to day night to day ALWAYS WITH THE NIGHT TO DAY! when will it EVER END!!!”

JD gives this talk to my class every semester and it's still the best explanation of generative AI I've seen. Better educating students and colleagues on how the tech actually works feels like a small win these days.

Great news! This is out: Opening the black box of EEBO academic.oup.com/dsh/advance-...

As part of the Fredson Bowers award from @bibsoc.bsky.social (🙏) I’ll be giving a short talk on ‘The reassembly, analysis and appraisal of John Bellingham Inglis (1780-1870): #rarebooks collector; savant; scholar; slave owner’ November 18th, 5-7pm. In person / online bibsoc.org.uk/event/panel-...

Job Announcement: Head of Preservation, Conservation, and Digitization at Pennsylvania State University digital-scholarship....

Really pleased to announce the launch of the all-new, all-dancing, London Lives website - www.londonlives.org It has been thoroughly re-engineered to facilitate more types of search, and redesigned for phones and tablets. The team very much hopes peope like it. 1/

Really exciting book news out of Norway. And while the article focusses on the sealskin binding, I'm even more excited by the fact that these neumes are not square, which suggests a date well before 1200.

For Penn undergrads with a nascent interest in DH, J.D. Porter’s spring course offers a practical introduction to computational methods for humanities research. No prior programming knowledge is required! More info on Path@Penn.

Added this mind-boggling slide from Chris’s research to the episode homepage.

Do you work at a small U.S. liberal arts college or at a university with 5,000 or fewer undergrads? If so, check out Rare Book School’s 𝗠. 𝗖. 𝗟𝗮𝗻𝗴 𝗙𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗼𝘄𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽 𝗶𝗻 𝗕𝗼𝗼𝗸 𝗛𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆, 𝗕𝗶𝗯𝗹𝗶𝗼𝗴𝗿𝗮𝗽𝗵𝘆, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗛𝘂𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗧𝗲𝗮𝗰𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗛𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗦𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗰𝗲𝘀! Application deadline: 𝟳 𝗗𝗲𝗰𝗲𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟱 rarebookschool.org

A spooky listen, full of higher ed ghosts ‘n’ ghouls.. but also rich with fresh ideas & possibility for the humanities. Thanks to @mattseybold.bsky.social for having me on & @cnewf.bsky.social for his vision!

My "Intro to DH" students are working through the various ways to model a book digitally. One student tried using GPT to HTR a manuscript from 1750. They discovered that many words in the output text were silently replaced with synonyms -- like "kid" for "child."

Today on the blog: a magnificent find by @franceswolfreston.bsky.social of a book that the poet Katherine Philips gave to Mary Jeffreys; a discussion with important scholarly implications for the study of Philips earlymodernfemalebookownership.wordpress.com/2025/10/27/h... #EarlyModern #HerBook

These "Teaching the Codex" blog posts introducing collation formulas from Dr. Sian Witherden @sianwitherden.bsky.social have particularly good illustrations that make it clear for students learning about it for the first time. 📜 teachingthecodex.com/author/teach...

That very MUNDANE action that you don't take because you are too busy fantasizing about being a superhero instead would actually DO something for someone. Your fantasy does not.

A neat tool I just came across: Viabundus, a digital road map of northern Europe 1350-1650, that lets you calculate contemporary travel routes/times. In 1500, going Amiens → Köln by horse took almost 7 days and 13 toll payments. #medievalsky www.landesgeschichte.uni-goettingen.de/handelsstras...

History PhD candidate & Summer Mellon Fellow Eleanor Webb joined Prof Emily Steiner’s inter-disciplinary team to help bring a 15th-cent genealogical roll held by @freelibrary.bsky.social online. Created circa 1461-1464, the roll is 15 ft long and consists of 11 sewn parchment membranes.

ITHAKA S&R has started a Generative AI Licensing Agreement Tracker sr.ithaka.org/our-work/gen...

And round and round it goes, volvelle-style. This #earlymodern broadsheet is deeply engaged with contemporary topics of the #ThirtyYearsWar. Eight perspectives on one page, a complex story to enfold for the audiences. A volvelle does the trick. A 🧵 for #bookhistory experts, and #skystorians 🗃️

I would be willing to put a lot of money on the fact that “AI” didn’t do this at all. Human error. Because microworkers do much of this “automated detection.”

Excited to share my latest publication, "Generative Aesthetics: On formal stuckness in AI verse." It's published in a special issue in the Journal of Cultural Analytics, expertly edited by Tess McNulty and Laura Chapot, on "Computation and Form, Reconsidered." culturalanalytics.org/article/1448...

For those local to Philly: next Wed., 10/22, our faculty director @whitneytrettien.bsky.social will join @mattseybold.bsky.social and Christopher Newfield to tape an episode of The American Vandal podcast. Join the live audience! 5-7pm in UPenn's Fisher Bennett Hall, room 135.

I made a lil game inspired by the Wordle universe. It's called Versedle (pronounced Verse-a-dle). You guess who wrote famous lines of literature. As my parents can attest, it's hard! I made them an Easy Mode, but it's still kinda hard. Maybe you'll like it! ▶️ 📚: melaniewalsh.github.io/versedle/

The open use of federal funds as a blunt force object to get universities, cities, and other entities in line is criminal. Those are tax payer dollars! And so much capitulation! Dbjdonfonifbinrondondonodnonfonfoninfonfin

Bibliographical Mysteries! "Share your successes and failures, cold cases, breakthroughs, speculative practices, novel uses of technology, collaborative momentum, and other stories." CFP *by 10.7* for a special session of @bibsocamer.bsky.social annual meeting. bibsocamer.org/news/cfp-bsa26

🚨 Job alert! UPenn Libraries, on behalf of @digitalscriptorium.bsky.social, seeks to appoint an early career library professional or postdoctoral researcher with a background in premodern manuscript studies for an NEH-funded, 22-month Manuscript Data Curation Fellowship 📜

The UC Berkeley School of Information is hiring an assistant professor in the broad field of Information--including areas of info seeking/retrieval, digital humanities, cultural analytics, info viz, & philosophy of information (among others). Deadline Nov 1! aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF05014

My book Cultural Analytics in R: A Tidy Approach has just been published! It showcases how tidy data can be used in cultural analytics workflows, from text analysis, machine learning, network science, etc. Check it out: link.springer.com/book/10.1007... #tidyverse #rstats #digitalhumanities

“We will not allow authoritarians to dismantle higher education. We will not allow billionaires to profit while communities suffer. And we will not allow fear to silence students and workers who speak out.” — Todd Wolfson, AAUP President #DefendHigherEd #HigherEdBenefitsEveryone @aft.org

Trying to keep my professional chill but I’m SO excited Carnegie Mellon is launching a cluster hire in computational humanities—MULTIPLE JOBS! 1. Asst Teaching Track Prof in Computational Humanities - apply.interfolio.com/173622 2. Asst Tenure Track Prof in CH - apply.interfolio.com/173626

TikTok is investing in a $10 billion data center in Brazil. Indigenous people who claim the land are suing, saying they were not consulted on the project https://restofworld.org/2025/brazil-indigenous-group-sues-tiktok-data-center/

Miguel Cabrera, posthumous portrait of Mexican nun and writer Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648-1695), c. 1750, oil on canvas (Museo Nacional de Historia, Castillo de Chapultepec, Mexico City)

Excited to share this cfp for the first mini-conference of an ongoing series my colleagues and I are organizing titled Currently Keywords in Digital Literary Culture. This time, we're inviting papers on "smut" and "lore"! Deadline to apply Oct. 8th forms.gle/Ccuaav7rGmMs...