I love locations that aren’t on the map in RPGs

Halo 2 Skin for Windows Media Player 10

My partner and I watched Emmet Otter’s Jugband Christmas and I am happy to report that it led to me discovering my new favorite band The Riverbottom Nightmare Band m.youtube.com/watch?v=jJ3c...

New article out by me and @ashleyblewer.com titled “Each character you create requires a full 15 blocks!” Preserving Video Game Memory Cards in the Age of Cloud Storage." In it, we examine the sociotechnical challenges of preserving video game memory cards. Read it here: tinyurl.com/53pnv64b

I’m passing on a question from @drtlwagner.bsky.social & their students: Do you know of existing/in process book history work on clip art? I know Shep’s history of print emoji & anecdotally I know some early clip art remediated printer’s ornaments—as does the "font" Wingdings—anyone digging in more?

Truly stoked to have my favorite academic partner in crime continue teaching with us! I’m gonna insist all of our students take classes with Ashley!

Really excited to be both presenting as part of this series and to be helping @ryancordell.org conceptualize the series as well! More from me hopefully in the coming months on this intersection between queerness, archives, and format obsolescence!

📄'How do LGBTQ+ library catalog users talk about subject searching?'🔽 doi.org/10.1108/JD-1... #Library #Research #Catalogue #Metadata #LGBTQ

Proposing a society level resolution for the new year: Bands should only be able to cover “Hunger Strike” by Temple of the Dog

We did a thing! Thanks to the EveryLibrary team and to all of the wonderful contributors! p.s. a webinar series highlighting some of the articles is coming in early 2026. www.everylibraryinstitute.org/everylibrary...

Move over media archaeology we are trying to actively revive these skeletons 🧙📼💀

A new article is out in Cataloging and Classification Quarterly, where my colleague Karen Wickett and I explore how the LCSH "Conduct of Life" enacts, often anti-queer, ideological work on information objects. Read the article here: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Just found out that Jimmy Cliff passed away. I guess it is time to give this song a ton of spins and watch the movie that gives it its namesake. There's truly nothing quite like it. youtu.be/BpQrLUopf-k?...

I think I have found what is officially the best name for a backup band ever: youtu.be/lc-pIH0CBxM?...

In my IS 308: Race, Gender, and Information Technology class, I asked students to make zines today about inclusive tech issues, and they insisted that I should also participate. I thought that was a fair request and took a swing at making my own (though I didn't finish)

Next in New Currents, @drtlwagner.bsky.social & Alison Harding use traditional analyses to examine work created using generative AI in ""Remember, love knows no boundaries and comes in many forms": The conceptualization of queerness within AI-generated fan works"! Read it in #TWC46:

Hit an important Google Scholar citation mark today 😈 #hailsatan

New survey researching how recent policy shifts within the U.S. in higher education are impacting DEI reparative metadata/cataloging efforts in academic libraries & archives in the U.S., Canada, or Mexico. 📚 #critcat uncg.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

Students in my Information Organization and Access course have an assignment where they make their own taxonomy on a topic of their choosing. One student did TV shows, and included I Think You Should Leave, and I felt obligated to include this comment.

Stoked to share my op-ed in The Hill that I wrote as part of The OpEd Project 2025–26 Public Voices Fellows at UofI. In it, I talk about historical trends in automation and how it might inform current understandings of anti-trans legislation. Check it out here: thehill.com/opinion/civi...

The folks at University of Illinois have very kindly invited me to give a little talk next week (10/22)! Stop by if you're in Urbana, or zoom in if you're not. Many, many thanks to @drtlwagner.bsky.social for facilitating, and details can be found here: ischool.illinois.edu/news-events/...

Excited to announce my new article titled 'In A Way I’m Coming Out to All of You Tonight'": Activist Media, Digital Curation Pedagogy, and the future of Queer Archives' in the most recent issue of Synoptique focused on "Teaching Media Archives"

Found this incredible set of cels out of a 90s issue Excalibur (a spin off of X-Men) and fully intend to use it as the cover photo next time I teach Digital Preservation

Turns out the easiest way to turn off the perpetually useless AI overview on Google is to switch browsers. Time to live the Duck Duck Go life, I guess.

For most of undergrad/grad school, I stopped playing video games. The joy of returning was being able to play a decade of indie/AAA games in a row. To a lesser extent, I am doing this with anime, but have the benefit of expedient access to older stuff without needing to use extralegal means.

New article with a former doc student from UMD. We examine how ChatGPT interprets the creation of queer fanfiction across fandoms that feature openly queer and/or "shipped" queer characters. It took time to publish, but I think the findings hold up: journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/tw...

New obsession is tracking down and playing a copy of the board game Dragon Strike which includes a corresponding VHS tape of footage corresponding to the game

New publication in Archival Science focused on how archival practitioners working with queer collections construct and manage finding aids. This work was done in collaboration with a set of MLIS students, one who joined our PhD program yesterday Read it here: link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Nothing prepares you for the chaos of students returning to U of I. We’re talking “Master Blaster Runs Campustown” levels of chaos.

There are a lot of weird and wacky things about Urbana-Champaign, but one of the weirdest and wackiest is Emoji Cream, which is an ice cream truck run out of a van that cranks trap-infused versions of classic ice cream jingles.

Congratulations to #iSchoolUI Associate Professor Maria Bonn, Teaching Assistant Professor Haileleol Tibebu, and Assistant Professor Travis L. Wagner on being selected for this year’s cohort of the Public Voices Fellowship! ▶️ bit.ly/419ThZK

A bit belated but my favorite thing about presenting at the Northeast Historic Film Summer Symposium is always the setup which involves theater style projection. My second favorite thing is using that setup to sneak in absurd videos which this year involved Leroy Jenkins

New article drop titled "I Like the Narrative of Curating What We Watch": The Curatorial Worlds of Retroconversion Artists, which talks to artists who take contemporary, often digital media, and revert it to older formats such as VHS tapes. Check it out here: journals.sagepub.com/eprint/GEB7V...

I was messing around with the Guess the Game and am ashamed that I was able to instantly guess Facade based on one small corner of the room, but also reminded about the one week where me and @ashleyblewer.com became fixated on "winning" the game.

For some reason, this bit from Conan popped into my head, and it truly is one of the best running gags on a show full of them: www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9b9...

This would have been my dream car circa 2002

My favorite thing about collaborating with @ashleyblewer.com on research is that we always end up gathering resources that routinely break citation guidelines (this time APA). So far for this paper, we have had to cite a Sega Dreamcast manual, an old GameFaqs forum, and a 3D printing schematic 😎

Only in Union Station (Chicago) can you see someone in full Ghostbusters cosplay explaining said cosplay to an Amish person

Thrilled to share my new article with Sangha Kang-Le, titled "Understanding the Value of a Digital Equity Researcher-Practitioner Collaboration Using Participatory Action Research" just published in the Journal of Participatory Research Methods. #digitalequity jprm.scholasticahq.com/article/1290...

For CAIS 2025, I'll be hosting a panel next Wednesday morning on "Knowledge Organization in a Dangerous Time." Come to hear my very smart colleagues discuss what metadata has to do with fascism; stay for the free virtual registration to the whole wonderful conference! cais2025.ca/talk/1931-bu...

I finally got around to watching Grand Theft Hamlet and was surprised by how much I enjoyed it! I'm not sure if it is a testament to how wonderfully odd and participatory virtual spaces like Grand Theft Auto Online can be or because some Shakespeare truly is timeless. Perhaps a bit of both?

Doing some research that involves perusing early 90s technology magazines, and am reminded about how valuable a certain archive of the internet is to this work, but also reminded how that same place would benefit from even the most minimal of metadata quality control

I know a lot of us are confounded by how folks could shift to tech solutions for very easy tasks, but as someone who just tried to do subtraction by hand for the first time in some time and lurched through the process it is starting to make more and more sense

Another student in their digital preservation video essay on preserving a UMD copy of Ghost Rider may have come up with a visual and mantra that I will share far and wide

A highlight from a student video essay for my digital prez class. In it they tracked down obsolete hardware and software to preserve an N64 Memory Pack labeled "Sports," only to discover corrupted files. A fun, albeit disconcerting, example of the need for digital preservation work to be proactive.

As it turns out, @florencesn.bsky.social and @mtrc.bsky.social's ArchaeOS is pretty much a solo tabletop RPG about inscrutable artifacts and our relationship to a digital past that's actively eroding beneath our fingertips. And it gives you printable zine!

Listen there has been a lot beautiful tech in the world but my personal favorite might be this Pioneer Laserdisc controller

This is a friendly reminder that looking up the musicians who post stickers for their bands on local signage can sometimes yield interesting results. At worst, you learn about passionate local musicians and at best, you learn about new genres of music like "neon" metal.

Found this Game Genie ad in a comic book and posted it to the back of my office door partly because I like the aesthetic and to help serve as a guiding principle 👾😎👽

🚨 NEW ARTICLE! 🚨 Understanding conspiracy culture through alternate reality gaming and rare book catalogues! 🚨 How an early internet hoax called Ong's Hat holds the secret to understanding our present post-literate culture! doi.org/10.1108/JD-0...