e-newsletters are bad for me, both personally and professionally

May we all bring the fugitive eagerness of our most unreliable donors into this new year

don't you do it. don't you dare circle back with me

Let me limp out of this year in peace

Something to keep your eye on. Popular discourse is starting to turn against AI, so new frameworks are being built to continue selling it. We are about to see a flood of media that qualifies AI: “Gen AI” is bad and overhyped but “predictive” or “analytic AI” is responsible and good. +

one of my longest-standing and deepest-held grievances in this profession is that we should stop naming all of our systems cutesy things that obfuscate what they actually do

The gall to ask for my headshot, thereby reminding me how much I hate my headshot

My husband (a HS teacher) developed a new elective on the National Parks and he’s invited in various rangers to talk to his class, with today’s virtual visit from Independence NHP. Anyway, my love language is abolitionist print

*My* test would have to be on something I know was not already up in a repository because They Spent All Of 2024 and 2025 Fucking Up My Repository With AI Scraper Traffic; It Cost 6 Figures To Fix: We Now Pay Five Figures To Cloudflare To Protect Some Farly Basic Old Shit

“Poster” implied commercially printed but I see now that this is better

My experience of peer review, no matter how gentle or correct, is just 3896 reminders that I don’t know how to use commas

I am sympathetic to this, and yet I am also sympathetic to “someone make John Fry stop buying places”

The supermarket is playing Low (complimentary)

Re USian discourse: One tiny straw in a pile of straws at my last job was not being able to use the phrase “American Dream” in an exhibit on the New Deal, because it didn’t refer to both continents. (Instead: “the shared dream of United States’s people”) (Let’s bring back Esperanto’s Usona!)

Nearly two decades after I was personally booed by my friends for suggesting we watch “Southland Tales” one of them just messaged the group chat to say actually it is pretty good (ok, “it is weird how it feels less weird”) and that small vindication will carry me to the year 2031.

I do find it funny that there are two (2) kinds of special collections library job: 1. You speak 18 languages; never sleep; have worked in a library for 50 years; published the definitive work on whatever the Board thinks is Most Important; salary of a billion dollars 2. You give book ($5/hour)

Who’s going to tell them!!! www.flyicarusny.com

Probably all(?) of us did extremely dumb things like this in our project gulag days at the direction of folks who should have known better. But why do folks (“teaching!”) still not know better????????? (Related: I thought the LIS credential was dumb before and… I sure still do)

I’m recovering from a tonsillectomy so thank god there’s something gossipy in the culture news, perfect medicine for my need for shams, small cabals, disgruntled board members etc.

Hoping this helps our colleagues across the industry

get in loser, we're speaking ill of the dead

Nothing makes me Nicholson Baker like periodicals weeding (Obviously these have not been weeded that’s why I can check them out but I bet we also used to have like Collier’s etc and I know I KNOW libraries can’t keep everything but nevertheless)

Boston Public Library holds the “pattern pike” used by John Brown to order arms for the raid. According to BPL records, it passed from Brown to John Hopper (son of Isaac), to William Lloyd Garrison, and thence to the library. Yes, it is SHARP.

Does your workplace make on-demand reference scans publicly accessible? 📜📦📂 We’re thinking through our (bad, ad hoc) workflows and I would be interested to hear yours…

For curricular reasons I don’t understand, my 9yo learned about floppy disks yesterday as “objects social scientists may study” and guess who had a 5” floppy at home from this event (me). Gonna mark his surprise show-and-tell today on my outreach stats.

Doing a pop-in workshop always leaves me feeling like the Pulp song “Sorted for E’s and Wizz” (especially in the evening!) but look how cool these prints/totes are!

After glibly dunking on someone’s writing, I’ve gotta find balance: and conveniently I just reread this 2022 post by @grubstreetwomen.bsky.social I spend a lot of time looking at old title pages (and asking students to do the same) and this is great: womensprinthistoryproject.com/blog/post/111

I have read through the new OCLC blog post about AI in archives (hangingtogether.org/exploring-ai...) and liveblogged my response over on Mastodon. Overall, it really doesn't feel like they consulted with archivists or took our expertise seriously. Some highlights:

The whole thread is very astute (my colleague is great!) but frankly it is time for archivists to give precisely the quantity of shits about what OCLC is saying* as they give to our professional practices. (None) *selling, or preparing to

Finalizing the object list for next year’s America250 exhibit and here’s my favorite:

I’m still thinking about this. Look at the FAQ page — even if you’re inclined to defer judgment (…I’m not), there is not a single forward-looking question that anticipates the “pivotal” and “transformational” opportunity UNC is selling.

My day is shot bc a colleague just shared this UNC press release about a still to-be-named, to-be-designed, to-be-planned AI school where the only known fact seems to be that it will replace the library school. www.unc.edu/posts/2025/1...

On this day where librarians consider the closing of Baker & Taylor, I would like to remind you that Sandy Berman still walks this earth and today is his birthday. www.sanfordberman.org

For real, though, if you want a librarian/archivist-oriented intro to regex (and where, how, and for what you can use it), check out this presentation I put together last year docs.google.com/presentation...

two core planks of 21st c. librarianship: • nationalize OCLC • protracted people’s war against clarivate

Just as well the cover illustrator was uncredited

“A.I. stated that a previously undetected record might be found at Swarthmore.”

There are 1500+ objects in our artifact collection and I know almost nothing about any of them so I’m very excited to learn with the ten students doing a semester-long object study (and exhibit!) One student picked the cutest lil scale (it includes weights mapped to international currencies)

manuscripts reading room: do not bring anything in, including yourself. place your internal organs in a clear plastic bag and keep it on the table at all times office at rare books seller: hold manuscript at least 20cm away from your face if eating a hotdog. ashtrays must be kept on the windowsill

List 3 things you can talk about for 3 hours with no prep: 1. Literally just say something and let me run 2. I can rant for hours 3. I'm not angry, really; I just have a lot of thoughts

Today’s work bright spot:

So this is 40. Unbothered. Moisturized. Happy. In My Lane. Focused. Flourishing.

If you are considering or planning to seek appointment or run for your local library board, FTP is here to support you. You can complete this form and we'll be in touch soon re: applying to join our next candidates' cohort kicking off in early 2026: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

TGIF from your friend PALLID QUAKER DRAB

Dan has set me up for success with his early morning text. May all library workers have a Dan!

“I think your instinct is correct that Grok is not able to provide you a real reference” is an email I just sent to a patron :(

Got to teach about friendship albums yesterday and ended up a little sad that a contemporary parallel one of the students suggested was “shared Spotify playlists” The same student said “slam books” though so I guess the vibe also endures in a vendor-nonspecific way

They're The Same Picture.