Another one bites the dust.

The English Print Revolution: Caxton and Beyond runs until 24 July. Pop over to @senatehouselib.bsky.social if you’re nearby

This drop in numbers of school pupils will eventually hit universities.

Seems like a lot of people want to go to uni, (a good thing!) despite issues from cuts in funding for teaching and research, and well publicized student debts. I am interested in student opinions on what they believe uni delivers.

Agreed. US perspective, but relevant to UK LIS education. An understanding and appreciation of the processes of information communication, as covered in an LIS masters course, provides the necessary foundation for the further study and specialisation increasingly needed for LIS services.

It is not for Reform to censor what other people’s children read.

EThOS platform restored! 'Following restoration work, all metadata records previously available on EThOS have now been restored, along with an additional 14,000 records added since the service was taken offline' - more to come www.bl.uk/stories/news...

The grant for 2026/27 will now no longer support some subjects at all, including archaeology, geography, nursing, computing and history courses, in order that funding for the likes of medicine, chemistry and engineering is “protected”. Vandalism of the HE sector. Hugely damaging to the UK's future.

Performing and creative arts university courses will no longer receive funding from a government teaching grant as part of “difficult decisions” about spending priorities, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has said.

Read the feasibility study for the European Books Data Commons and discover the next steps! Explore how European libraries can make the full text of millions of digitised books available for research, innovation and contribute to a European AI infrastructure built on public values: bit.ly/4gs09tY

Edward Hopper’s Iconic Painting Nighthawks Explained in a 7‑Minute Video Introduction

Bologna opens a new library containing more than 32,000 books from Umberto Eco's private study - arranged exactly as he left them - a decade after his death.

The first programmer was neither Ada Lovelace nor Charles Babbage but the French weaver and inventor Joseph Marie Jacquard, who was born 7 July 1753 #histsci #histtech thonyc.wordpress.com/2018/12/26/c...

“These reductions in funding will be more sharply felt by some institutions than others....All institutions will now need to plan for how best to adjust their budgets to ensure they continue to deliver high-quality courses and resources to students.” (OfS) They've not yet actually done their sums.

“It was first a literal living exhibit of the expanding welfare system, with human-scaled communitarian architecture at its heart”: Phineas Harper on the Festival of Britain, seventy-five years on

I want to be Margo when I grow up.

“Enshittification” has made it into the Oxford English Dictionary. Coined by @doctorow.pluralistic.net, it is defined as “the process by which an online platform degrades over time, typically resulting from business decisions prioritizing profit”. It is one of 900 new entries this quarter.

‘The​ surviving works of St Augustine run to more than five million words. To give some sense of scale, that’s roughly 10 per cent of all the Latin literature extant from before 600 AD.’ Christopher Kelly on a new account of Augustine. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Helpful thread on how AI contributes to deciphering Herculaneum scrolls

This is one of the dumbest and saddest things I've ever seen. We should not think of universities in this way, and if we do that'll destroy everything that is both useful and good about them. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

In this guest post, Margaret Irons, Librarian at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies explores why Research Data Management (RDM) is becoming essential for library professionals, sharing her takeaways from a recent micro-credential in #RDM & #DataStewardship. www.libfocus.com/2026/06/deve...

Trafalgar Square’s St Martin-in-the-Fields gives up secrets of its stones

Thunderbolts and lightening very very keeping me awake.

Record breaking heat expected across UK this week, says Met Office

Constructing the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles by Daniel Anlezark boydellandbrewer.com/book/constru...

Today is the summer solstice in the northern hemisphere, lovely longest day! The temperatures in London however keep climbing beyond anything I can recall. I have little tolerance for those denying climate change. ☀️☀️☀️

This will be of interest to anyone thinking of a career in libraries. Wide range of skills listed as being relevant to academic libraries. US perspective but worth consideration by those designing UK LIS courses.

The Cotton Genesis (Cotton MS Otho B VI, 5th century) was one of the tragic victims of the Ashburnham House fire in 1731. Today, we’re delighted to release new multispectral imaging of the manuscript, allowing us to read its texts for the first time in hundreds of years. www.bl.uk/stories/blog...

How good is Palantir's NHS platform? Important story from Laura Hughes and Amy Borrett - www.ft.com/content/a3e9...

Good news! Ministers have finally given green light to new #NaturalHistory GCSE. We’ve campaigned so long for this! Big hats off to tireless advocate Mary Colwell 🙌 Now our young people will have a chance to get to know & love the natural world, to feel awe & wonder, & gain skills to protect it 🌷🌳🦡

Toxic managerial behaviour. Unlikely to solve anything.

Very sad news. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Uh huh.

Great to see that our work @fanlis.bsky.social continues to be read! #Superman #pinkkryptonite

This lecture is uplifting and inspiring. Anyone connected to the LIS profession and indeed, anyone in local/national government, should take 50 mins to listen. It will certainly be of interest to any former CityLIS students. Focus on the last section. Libraries underpin democratic society.

Compelling photos of past (grimy!) London. Lovely post.

Medieval King Arthur manuscript could fetch £2m at auction

Historians slam ‘marketisation and neglect’ of higher education. Royal Historical Society issues stinging rebuke of English model amid escalating cuts. www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-c...

‘Such was Æthelstan’s stature that leading Continental families sought (and gained) alliance with him, establishing an unprecedented network of foster-sons and in-laws, from Scandinavia to the Alps.’ Nicholas Higham on England’s first kings. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

In sampled HEIs (in a sample of unstated size [it's over 140] and % of sector), 38% are making compulsory redundancies, 79% voluntary redundancies, 31% cutting research, 44% are cutting courses. Link to the UUK report on the survey, which is open access, is below. 2/2

For decades I was in awe of political systems that allowed universities to exist as bastions of free, independent, scholarship and teaching even when it was sharply critical of those in power. Seemed to me a litmus test of the liberal democratic spirit. Fearing now I’ve lived through its heyday.

Leiden University Library published Nomenclator, world's first institutional library printed catalogue #OTD 1595. ⁦‪University of Leiden

Matthew Payne’s lecture, ‘Who was Elizabeth Northe? John Lettou and London’s first printing press’, is now online: www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRmU... It examines the circumstances surrounding the setting up of London’s first press, and the distribution of works produced by it in London in the 1480s.

'Archaeological evidence shows immigration from many parts of Northern Europe, and Bede supposed that several Germanic tribes were involved, resulting in Saxon, Jutish and Anglian settlers. He considered them all English (Angles) in some sense, united by language and obedience to one archbishop. 1/3

‘We want to see continuity in print, but it took a lot of actual and ideological work to make the printed word actually do the things that it came to stand for.’ @tomlukejohnson.bsky.social on William Caxton and the story of the English printing press. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Also one of life’s joys.

“Tyrants and autocrats have always understood that literacy, learning, books and newspapers are potentially dangerous. They can inspire independent thought and even rebellion.” — Carl Sagan

Palantir’s focus is surveillance. They should be nowhere near the NHS, and certainly not near patient data. They are bad actors, and those pushing the contract know this.