A small but very deep thing that bothers me about generative AI as a shortcut to practice and work and skill is the basic assumption that it’s impossible to take pleasure in a creative pursuit that you aren’t very good at and I assure you that is not the case

Stop Meeting Students Where They Are What I learned when I finally started assigning the hard reading again. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0... | @theatlantic.com

The Wright Museums Instagram page is HILARIOUS. Think The Office but it's the staff at a Museum for Black History. Better believe this is on my list of places to visit. Gentle Spades "I'm a veteran"

Please consider donating towards the funerary and hospital costs for Fobazi Ettarh; and showing support for her partner Elena.

Our call for papers closes on 13 Feb. Theme is Authenticity: What of inevitable changes to the item to preserve them and/or make them accessible? Is accessibility the enemy of authenticity? Full info openingdoors-ara2026.eventsair.site/call-for-pap...

No joke: I got angry hate mail today for writing an obituary of a Black woman scientist—because the person felt she did didn’t deserve the recognition. Which just makes me want to share it again: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

THIRD PRINTING ALERT: This is my first book and @wehere.bsky.social's first book. The response has been overwhelming (two small printing selling out in a matter of days), but also has meant a bit of lead time in-between. If you've read and enjoyed, please share this out so more folks can explore!

#archives #wisdom Dang. If we could ask all new archivists swear an oath like the Hippocratic oath, I think it should look something like this.

So much of this is relatable "Personally, I am growing tired of archives, or rather of the over-romanticization of them as infinite sources of liberatory politics" is very much the motto of my career but once again I wish someone writing about archives would read/reference an archivist

NEW ESSAY — Christine Jacobson’s “Typing for Love or Money”, on the neglected efforts of women like Theodora Bosanquet, Véra Nabokov, and Valerie Eliot, who — through their work as typists and editors — had a profound impact on modern literature: publicdomainreview.org/essay/typing...

THIRD PRINTING ALERT: This is my first book and @wehere.bsky.social's first book. The response has been overwhelming (two small printing selling out in a matter of days), but also has meant a bit of lead time in-between. If you've read and enjoyed, please share this out so more folks can explore!

This position pays just slightly more than the equivalent of what I made when I started as an entry-level junior specialist at Christie’s in New York nearly a decade ago. In London. For a “lead” position.

At the end of 2025 I was able to give the annual lecture @ the Centre for Data, Culture, and Society in Edinburgh. This lecture was an opportunity to share much of what Ive been working on for the past couple of years, in pursuit of archival discovery experiences for the masses tinyurl.com/mtuutmzr

The sort of things I'd commission in a drastically different timeline

At the end of 2025 I was able to give the annual lecture @ the Centre for Data, Culture, and Society in Edinburgh. This lecture was an opportunity to share much of what Ive been working on for the past couple of years, in pursuit of archival discovery experiences for the masses tinyurl.com/mtuutmzr

At a time when Black history is being erased, places like the Louis Armstrong House matter more than ever. That’s why I’m proud to partner with the Louis Armstrong House Museum to offer free admission to all visitors on Saturday, February 7th.

My friends did not win the Grammy they were nominated for tonight (complimentary), but what a joy to perform with them and to hear them perform

What time is it? It's the beginning of my favorite month, and I remain dedicated to being excited about Black History Month, Valentines Day, my birthday, even the beginning of the Lenten Triodion

This is who runs this account

A clear-eyed talk on grappling with AI experimentation, minimum viable description (metadata and alt-text), and cost-benefit analysis with a side of gems from the Johnson Publishing collection that NMAAHC and Getty are working to make available 📜

While poking around NUC, I once found someone had tagged Galen’s Ad Glauconum as being about glaucoma. But at least human error is theoretically fixable through education…

The college at which I'm employed, which has signed a contract with the AI firm that stole books from 131 colleagues & me, paid a student to write an op-ed for the student paper promoting AI, guided the writing of it, and did not disclose this to the paper. www.thedartmouth.com/article/2026...

In today’s cataloging pile, a small group of handbills and posters relating to an 1888 US railroad strike. These were posted in Superior, Nebraska.

I know there's a lot going on right now, but you might like to know that one of the most incisive & perceptive American painters of the twentieth century, Alice Neel, was born on this day in 1900. First up, an intimate & touching 1930s pastel of Neel & her lover José Santiago in bed

my most commented upon baseball cap becomes once again relevant (it says LIFE DISINTEGRATING on the back and is my farmers market cap)

The Deborah E. McDowell papers are now available for research. McDowell is Alice Griffin Prof. Emerita of Literary Studies at UVA & director of the Julian Bond Papers Project. This image is “Norton Anthology editors at Cornell, 1987.” Finding aid: www.riamco.org/render?eadid... @dem8z.bsky.social

i’m a librarian and i really love archivists and their mission. we librarians serve the people of the present. archivists serve posterity.

Almost 256 years ago, when British soldiers were occupying a city that was restless in their presence but still firmly part of the empire, a confrontation ended in the shooting death of five people, with 6 more wounded. This offset image of the Boston Massacre is so evocative. 1/

Job posting: Director, Lemelson Center for Study of Invention & Innovation @Smithsonian National Museum of American History. FT, onsite, Salary: $167,603-$195,200; Closing Date: 02/13/26. Responsible for strategic leadership, supervision/mgmt; fundraising for the Center.

Hey #BibWeek, help me promote this job? ukjobs.uky.edu/postings/614... (I'm not there because I'm in Spain but you'll work with me a lot and I'm happy to chat)

Look at this: @inquirer.com has digitally preserved the interpretative signage removed by NPS, and used annotations to explain what specifically was flagged before removal. This keeps the content publicly accessible (for now) while doing newsworthy reporting www.inquirer.com/news/philade...

BACK BY DEMAND 🌹 after 2 sell out print runs The House Archives Built & Other Thoughts on Black Archival Possibilities by @dorothyjberry.bsky.social is back Feb 4, 12p ET! don't miss your chance to grab this important piece of writing on libraries+archives+memory+black history www.weherepress.org

Imagine the shared absurdity laughs when I sat down at my local for a latte, plopped this book out, and MLK Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech came on the aux

No surprise to librarians, but perhaps surprising to users, demands/prices for ebooks /audiobooks are killing public library budgets. David Szalay's book, Flesh,” costs DCPL: $28.99 hardcopy $59.99 ebook $69.99 audiobook DCPL owns hardcopy; rents & must repurchase ebook & audio book every 2 yrs.

Born #onthisday in 1574, the great occult philosopher Robert Fludd. Pictured here his image of the "spiritual brain". More about the man and his philosophy in our essay by Urszula Szulakowska: https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/robert-fludd-and-his-images-of-the-divine #otd

Patriarchy aside (ha), a nice thing about growing up in my Orthodox family is not realizing other folks weren't learning about all these ladies

Do you wanna play Pythagoras? Board game, Rotterdam, 1808.

Black Bostonians signed the petition to free their kidnapped neighbors in 1788. Governor John Hancock and many other white Bostonians—including the former enslavers of some of the kidnapped men—used their influence to free the men from captivity in the Caribbean and return them home to Boston.

Have been thinking a lot lately about something Dada artist Hugo Ball wrote in his diary in 1916, amidst the violence & turmoil of World War I, as he reflected on the movement's use of masks, costumes, & performance: "The horror of our time, the paralyzing background of events, is made visible."

Talking about Craig Robertson’s The Filing Cabinet this week so I cut up the syllabus so we can file the readings.

My first event on the light but a-lot-for-someone-with-a-separate-full-time-job book tour 2026 celebrates the great Douglass Day tradition of celebrating Douglass' birthday with a @digblk.bsky.social transcribr-athon, and a chance to meet Dr. Autumn Womack!

Check out these fantastic teaching resources for #AmRel and #AfricanaReligions. SPIRIT HOUSE has storymaps, music, comics, documentaries, experimental films, oral histories, and more related the Black religious histories, communities, and cultures.

Thread. [the shorthand about her that is often uplifted on social media always does her a disservice and also does Rosa Parks one too. Glad for this thread]

University of Arizona Libraries is hiring for a RARE BOOK LIBRARIAN! 1st review of applications February 9, 2026. arizona.csod.com/ux/ats/caree... We have great collections and great people here. Not on the committee, happy to chat.

Last year I was asked to give the keynote at the Conference of European National Librarians (CENL) meeting on AI and Libraries, and here it is! "Be More Library: Upholding Library Values in a Tech Industry World". In short, we need to define what WE want, and go get it! www.cenl.org/wp-content/u...

Armenian poet, communist, antifascist, trade unionist, gymnast, occasional sculptor's model, and resistance fighter. Killed a lot of Nazis in and around Paris, including SS Colonel Julius Ritter, who was the chief "recruiter" of slave labor in France for the Nazi regime.

English documentary photographer Janette Beckman, #TracyChapman, New York, 1988 #womensart

I curate the history series at public media's trade journal Current. We're looking for pieces on the history of NPR, PBS and its affiliates, with some space to imagine public media's future. We accept academic articles repurposed for wide readership. Plus, we pay. Please circulate!

I continue to live out certain corny countercultural ideals like the value of technology sourcebooks for education and empowerment. so, also just to say: there are still copies of the second printing of #othernetworks shop.mexicansummer.com/merch/495898... 1/2

My best friend lives in Minneapolis, I used to live there too. I've lived a lot of places and when people ask me what US city I'd chose again, it's always Minneapolis (sometimes with a side of Chicago)