hannah's reflections, in conversation with my original post, are so beautifully and truthfully written. I've been thinking a lot about how much the world has changed even in the four years since I quit my job. I still think, though, that giving yourself time to *fucking rest* is essential.

I promised myself when I left my position at NEH that after a year had passed, I'd write something about my experience as an un/under/employed former fed. Here it is: halperta.com/public%20wri...

It's publication day! Available in print and Open Access mitpress.mit.edu/978026255091... A book about how digital social reading apps are changing and nurturing the way we read. I talk about Wattpad, Goodreads, AO3 and more. @mitpress.bsky.social @unigroningen.bsky.social @gronlp.bsky.social

What is "AI for libraries" beyond a catalogue chatbot? IMO: design patterns (OCR, extraction, classification, search), and agents that both run them and develop the small models behind them. As part of work with @natlibscot.bsky.social started a book on this: danielvanstrien.xyz/ai-patterns-...

Here begins a little thread about all the chapters in my new book Shakespeare in the Kitchen! (to be updated sorta daily until I make it all the way through)

Thomas Dietterich, chair of the computer science section of ArXiv told 404 Media's @samleecole.bsky.social that this is a one-strike rule—meaning authors caught just once including AI slop in submissions will be banned—but that decisions will be open to appeal.

"I do not know how universities will be able to offer entirely online degrees without either 1) imposing severely draconian surveillance measures to keep pace with the need for quality assurance, or 2) tacitly accepting the erosion of academic integrity." jgellers.substack.com/p/i-was-a-un...

I Was a University AI Czar. I'm Not Equipped to Teach in the Age of AI. jgellers.substack.com/p/i-was-a-un...

I left Penn State just as the faculty unionization effort started in real earnest. It went through! www.pennstatefacultyalliance.org/news/2026/05...

Also, it comes with amazing stories about people like Corey, a university librarian who built up a collection of 160,000 photos of Michigan’s squirrel population on Flickr over time.

at my previous job, there were 3 Heathers (I was Heather 3, as the newest by approx 20 years). When the most senior Heather, Heather 1, retired, and the rest of us retained our status: Heather 2 and Heather 3. When I left, Heather 2 finally graduated to being just "Heather"

"With the correct licensing & a flexible perspective, every record we create can be looked at as data. Yet, as I look at different outputs in the world of digital preservation today, I see so many different outputs that we are happy to just publish as a PDF." exponentialdecay.co.uk/blog/mainten...

Interesting article/thread quantifying something college professors have noticed strongly since the pandemic: Even many well-off students have trouble reading 😮‍💨 Those students still get in to good schools so their parents don’t see the deskilling

"The MED as an online service...will continue indefinitely; and I myself expect to continue to update the content as long as I am able, more or less as an unfunded hobby in retirement -- not all that different from what I do now. So do not worry: MED is not going away any time soon."

🚨 #medievalsky 🚨 Middle English Dictionary update via FB: "In its 100-year history, MED has enjoyed periods of support, and periods when that support was lacking. It is about to enter on one of the latter. After this year...UMich will no longer fund ongoing editorial work and maintenance." 🧵

I really enjoyed our class's discussion today about Canvas. (By coincidence, this was our assigned reading: eric.ed.gov?id=EJ1254094 ) One student asked, are we sure that what the hackers plan to do with our data is any worse than what's *already* happening with our data?

Hold on. They paid the ransom?

RE: https://mastodon.social/@kagihq/116557703237172476 Might be a sweet job for someone with a web archiving background...

Today I got to learn how to update an item-level description, something I will (probably) never be allowed to do in real life ever, which prompted going back and looking at some of the metadata work I did as a phd student in (technically speaking) Early Modern Literature

ok oral history folks -- have we heard of theirstory.io? Has API, qual coding, indexing ... all the things people ask for in an oral history platform. And looks like faculty could use?

multiple people i know in publishing are of this opinion, and I think they are almost certainly correct, since they face the brunt of the We Must Have A Book

SSI is looking for reviewers, panel chairs, and observers to join the reviewer pool for Round 2 of the Research Software Maintenance Fund (RSMF). www.software.ac.uk/news/help-re...

The Modern Language Association confers up to two annual awards of $500 each for coursework developed in collaboration between department faculty members and academic librarians in literature, language, or related disciplines. www.mla.org/Resources/Ca...

@joshuajfriedman.com 1 week upgrading from iPhone mini in review — pros - stuff that was getting cut off on mini screen, fixed - screen is really nice to look at! - not as massive as I expected. I’m a 5ft2 woman w small hands and I can do a lot one handed. - camera! tho missing wide angle (17e)

can you all imagine what a million bespoke learning-content-management systems would be like? dear god the poor devs

The new issue of the Recipes Project on modern personal recipe collections that I guest-edited is now live! An incredibly thoughtful & fun group of essays, topics range from an 18th-century Japanese chef’s manuscript book to 21st-century recipe cards: recipes.hypotheses.org

At last! The archived British Library blogs are viewable online. Check the index of blogs at blogs-archive.bl.uk and the hundreds of posts on the Digital Scholarship blog going back to 2013 blogs-archive.bl.uk#digital-scho...

🚨 The U.S. Census Bureau just announced on Slack that starting on Tuesday, May 12, its APIs will require the use of an API key. This is going to be a big breaking change for anyone who was not already using one, with just 2 full business days of notice.

Copyright and Licensing in the Age of AI, Thursday 14th of May 2026 - 16:00-17:30 BST (8am Pacific) www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/rlukdlf-co...

Canvas was hacked again, with students all over the world receiving a message from ShinyHunters that their information will be leaked on May 12, 2026 unless a ransom is paid. More reports are being reported every minute: old.reddit.com/search/?q=ca...

‘Exploring Digital Cultural Heritage’ is now out in the wild! You can download an open-access copy (PDF) or read the free digital edition on Manifold uolpress.co.uk/book/explori.... Loved working on this with Eirini Goudarouli, @amsichani.bsky.social & the @uolpress.bsky.social team.

TALL (Text Analysis for ALL) is an interactive R Shiny application designed for exploring, modeling, and visualizing textual data. It provides a comprehensive, code-free environment for NLP, enabling researchers w/o extensive prog skills to perform text analyses github.com/massimoaria/...

We have been doing interviews for our rare books position this week & a colleague said to me, huh, there is a real through line with all this digital humanities stuff, so interesting

challenging myself to read a bunch of formal syntax scholarship today as a result of this. it's been years, very interesting, very mind-bending

today is the day I learned my gf, who also missed the entirety of The Toast and The Hairpin, is unaware of Hark! A Vagrant. She was alive and conscious and on the internet in those years (she is older than me). I don't know what she was doing?!

Sandiway Fong is teaching a seminar this fall at U of A, LING696A: Seminar on Syntax and Computation, an implementation of minimalist theory + large language models. Previews available here sandiway.arizona.edu/ling581-26/, lectures 26-29. looking RAD!

CFP: Journal of Critical Digital Librarianship (JCDL) journals.litwinbooks.com/index.php/jc... is accepting proposals for two special issues to be published early 2027: The Graduate and Digital Librarianship in an Eroding Democracy

CFP: The Journal of the Mormon Social Science Association (JMSSA) is accepting submissions for a special issue exploring the intersection of Mormon traditions and digital platforms. jmssa.org/cfp-platform...

one powerful giant industry sues another giant industry. I'd be surprised if anything that actually benefit the academic community or fundamentally disrupt the wide deployment of gen ai would come out of this

Frank Lloyd Wright compared the Sonoran landscape to the sea bed, all flat bottom and rocky relief, the cactus as diverse and monumental as coral... and bro was cooking

This may be a good visualization of what I mean. IL librarians teaching freshman classes tends to go for mid to high precision @10. They don't mind low recall (some don't even consider it). Precision shouldnt be perfect, so they can demonstrate filters, phrase searches (1)

Counting down to publication day on Thursday uolpress.co.uk/book/explori...

I don't think people fully understand yet just how fragile university-hosted digital resources are after external funding ends (especially if the lead academic retires or moves or is made redundant).

we have established here that i am from Extremely New England, and this morning I saw a casual mention to a vermonter sandwich, something I haven't eaten in like 15 years, and now the rest of my day is derailed (what is a vermonter sandwich? butternutmountainfarm.com/recipe/the-u...)

@joshuajfriedman.com still testing/feeling things out, more reportage still to come, but since size is a concern, iphone 17e in a case is a smidge larger than 1 field notes page (verso/recto) or sideways a little smaller than the opening (approx 5 boxes from an edge). so far, generally liking tho!

If you're a current or incoming English or languages department chair, associate chair, DGS, DUS, or faculty member with a longer-term interest in leadership, check out this summer seminar. Amazing workshops, plenaries & community to support your leading in the humanities in difficult times!

USB-C is a great invention and very good for everyone but damn if I haven't been fully entrenched into the Lighting cable environment for the better part of 15 yrs

I recently conducted a survey where over 1,000 fanfic writers & readers shared their perspectives on genAI (am currently still going through results and will share as writing happens). One thing is clear: genAI has destroyed trust in fandoms, just as it has destroyed trust in other spaces.

This is a key point that our head librarian pointed out to me. Flat or declining library budgets combined with rising ebook costs mean that increasingly the work of curating the collection is managed by outside vendors w no sense of specific institutional needs or attendance to concerns about AI.

MIDDLEMEN: LITERARY AGENTS AND THE MAKING OF AMERICAN FICTION is out today! Today marks the culmination of a decade's worth of work on this project: I conducted my first interview in fall of 2016. I'm so thrilled to share it with you.