Read this: epic waste on consultants by uni VCs, superbly critiqued by @gsoh31.bsky.social. We need a positive substitute to this "hawking". There's a gaping gulf between uni practice + real research on the "Big Con" by @rosiecollington.bsky.social[email protected] www.ft.com/content/5032...

Why did OpenAI shut down Sora, and what does it mean for the future? For forensic researchers battling disinformation, it's both a relief and a stark cautionary tale for an industry moving too fast, write Sarah Barrington and Hany Farid. There are lessons for platforms and policymakers, they say.

“Ministers justify cutting help for people too disabled to work by arguing it will remove the “perverse incentives” for benefits, as if a 25 year old bedbound with ME just needs incentivising to get back to the office.” My col. on next week’s Universal Credit cut www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

I assume that fabricated citations are a pretty trivial fix for the current GenAI models people are using to write fraudulent science papers. I don't mean this in an optimistic sense.

Rosalind Bucy is in Lecture Theatre 1 reporting on a Library Services and Technology Act grant project to form a cross-sector Professional Learning Community (PLC) to support #infolit for concurrent enrollment students. Bringing school librarians & an academic librarian together. #LILAC26

Two articles/researchers whose papers about political information literacy I really like (and bonus, they are based on actual research rather than click bait) are Simon Cloudesley and @walkyouhome.bsky.social . #lilac26 Try: ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid... and scholar.google.com/citations?vi...

Check out @shoutoutuk.bsky.social

What an inspiring and powerful talk. About vulnerability, creating change by teaching librarians who will then go and teach others, and this! “My first ‘aha’ was her. My whole life changed in that moment.” #LILAC26 #Collaboration #KnowledgeJustice #InformationLiteracy #Librarians

Join Heather Campbell, Lea Sansom & Ashley McKeown in Workroom 2, as members of a knowledge justice research collective at @westernu.ca they will share what they have learned by working across disciplines & professional boundaries, navigating discomfort, & partnering with students. #LILAC26

Join Jane Hammons & Amanda Folk in Workroom 2 as they share preliminary themes & examples from an ongoing research study focused on evaluating the effectiveness & impact of participation in an open, no-cost, online Teaching #InfoLit Certificate program facilitated by librarians. #LILAC26

Really impressed by the posters at #LILAC26. I definitely want to find out more about the new Digital and Information Literacy Framework from @ucclibrary.bsky.social

Interesting focus on ‘wise’- several @jinfolit.bsky.social articles are exploring how IL can also not be ‘wise’ - also, questioning whose understanding of wise prevails #lilac26

At 11.00am we have the pleasure of introducing our second #LILAC26 keynote, Sheila Webber, in Lecture Theatre 1. Sheila will be discussing 'Information Literacy in a time of polycrisis and cherry blossom'.

Fantastic tour of the Western Bank Library this morning, plus a quick peek at the continuous lift in the Art Tour! #LILAC26

Brilliant talk and discussion, shame this session has to end Related - "Resisting AI", Catarina Carvalho⁠⁠ talks to ⁠⁠Dan McQuillan on the podcast, Diversifying and Decolonising the University [in two parts] podverse.fm/episode/9qj3...

If you’re a new professional or attending LILAC for the first time, head over to the First Timers and New Professionals Welcome! Meet other people that are new to the conference or the profession before sessions begin on Level A of The Wave #LILAC26

Join Louise Speakman & Rebecca Beaumont in Workroom 1 as they introduce the innovative Information and Academic Literacies (I&AL) Toolkit. #LILAC26

Have you thought about making a nomination for the @infolitgroup.bsky.social Information Literacy Award? The award is open to all practitioners, researchers & academics working in the #infolit field in the UK. Self-nominate or nominate others before 14 Feb: www.lilacconference.com/awards/infor...

Madelene Logren is in Lecture Theatre 4 discussing findings from a qualitative study of social media content published by a Swedish network of nurses who challenge widely accepted truths about COVID-19 & the pandemic. #LILAC26

Michelle Rawlings @michellerawlins.bsky.social fascinating presentation on Sheffield's Women of Steel at #LILAC26 @lilacconf.bsky.social hforhistory.co.uk/h-for-histor...

Arrived in Sheffield for #LILAC26 @lilacconf.bsky.social yesterday, so naturally went straight to The National Videogame Museum @nvmuk.bsky.social

Join @thatlibraryman.bsky.social in Lecture Theatre 1 for an introduction to TRYangle: a new approach to evaluating sources fit for the AI age. #LILAC26

Lisa Eveson is in Lecture Theatre 1 reporting on @teessideuni.bsky.social library's pilot participation in JISC’s Digital Transformation through a Library Lens project. Exploring how libraries can drive institutional digital transformation. #LILAC26

Today's 'you can't make it up' - Receive Qs & notes for a panel I'm doing next month - Mod happy to say AI wrote them; it seemed 'appropriate' - Fight urge to say I'll use AI to answer them, then... - Check address for event in notes, different to address online - Their AI hallucinated address...

I never used Grammerly, because it never did really understand the point of grammar and just...used a bunch of rules. Grammar (and punctuation and even spelling) is actually really squishy and alive and changing.

🎊 SOAS Library's newly renovated Level D Main Reading Room opens at 10 this morning! 🎊

Bless the librarians of Aberystwyth University for sending this blog out to their students: "Wait a Minute…What If I Don’t Want to Use AI?" #LibrarySky

REVEALED: The EU spends hundreds of times more public money on high-emissions beef and dairy than legumes and nuts through its common agricultural policy (CAP) subsidies, according to new figures published today by Foodrise. Read the new report: foodrise.org.uk/CAPCrossroads/

“AI can never be AI without humans. It is not artificial intelligence. It’s African intelligence...We are training our own death. We train ChatGPT and it’s killing us slowly.” www.404media.co/ai-is-africa...

Great to see one our brilliant students at work! @soasuni.bsky.social @soaspolitics.bsky.social

Another in my series of libraries Luna the Library Horse - mobile library in Indonesia! #SomethingBeautiful #LoveLibraries #EveryLibraryMatters #Libraries #Library #LibrarySky #libsky

“Is that the reason why Germany’s culture commissioner, Wolfram Weimer, is now consulting the domestic intelligence agency before approving funds to bookshops?… A quick look at the three bookshops is telling: they are antifascist, they are proud of it and they are institutions in their communities.”

@marissalevien.bsky.social makes a case against gamified reading.

“Blocking access to books does not change our history nor…who we are. It simply prevents readers from understanding the complexity and beauty of the world we live in.” @maris.bsky.social on why we must stop bill HR 7661, which would ban books on sex & gender from public schools/libraries nationally

H.R. 7661 is a national book banning bill which seeks to remove any book that "involves gender dysphoria or transgenderism" from all public schools in the US. This would ban all my books, & any other book with trans themes, from public schools. PLEASE call your House Reps & say: NO ON H.R. 7661!

Extraordinary online exhibition on the Nazi persecution of trans and gender non-conforming people. With lessons for us all, today. Curated by the fabulous Kai* Brust, trans historian in Berlin and member of the www.fu-berlin.de/presse/infor... project. exhibition-qi.educat-kollektiv.org/en/

People refuse to acknowledge how an LLM actually works, and insist on assigning meaning and understanding to its output. There is no meaning, and the system understands neither the user’s question nor its own “response.”

Here's the latest attempt to erase Palestine from history. The free speech warriors are silent. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Scary stuff www.futurity.org/password-man...

Today, in honour of WEB DuBois's birthday in 1868, the @publicdomainrev.bsky.social features the hand-drawn infographics DuBois made with his students to depict the conditions of African-American life in 1900. Arts-based pedagogy all those years ago! buff.ly/3kdWqRD

🌙 Mongolian Poetry Time @ Central Library - Today at 1pm! Join us in celebrating the beauty of Mongolian language and culture through poetry as we welcome the Lunar New Year and Tsagaan Sar in Dublin. 📅 Date: Friday, 20 February ⏰ Time: 13:00 📍Central Library ✨ Free event

It's the Leeds Symposium of Food History & Traditions' big 4-0. It's on Friday 24 April & the topic is 'Food and War'. There are some great speakers inc BFHP podcast alumni @alessandrapino.bsky.social & Marc Meltonville. REMEMBER, IT'S IN YORK! Book here: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/food-and-w...

An essay I wrote for The Dial about Wikipedia's humanity in the age of AI informational slurry is out now!

I forget how long I have been working on this, I started it during lockdown and have worked on it sporadically over the summers since then. Transformative Economics Education: Decolonising Economics Through a Multidimensional Approach osf.io/4sp8y/

Interesting piece from @idemamba.bsky.social wonkhe.com/blogs/ai-sha...

The semester 2 SOAS Food Forum continues next Monday with our own Charlotte Sanders: 'Hard to Stomach: Food and Embodied Violence in UK Asylum Hotel Accommodation.' 📅 26 January, 1:15-2:45pm 📍 SOAS, R301 (Main Building)

📣 Our departmental research seminar series continues tomorrow: "Life in the Cracks: Law, Violence, and Resistance in Haiti" - Prof Marco Motta (University of Lausanne) 📅 4 February, 3pm-5pm 📍 RB01, Main Building, SOAS See here for registration and further details: camhra.soas.ac.uk/event/life-i...

📣 Our colleagues in the media studies department are holding their next seminar series event this evening: "Joyride": Centring queer joy for/as human flourishing in a 'late digital age' - Prof Lexi Webster (Southampton) 📅 5pm - 7pm, 5 February 📍 SALT, Senate House, SOAS All welcome.

Dr. Stefanie Lotter (SOAS, University of London) was a Co-Investigator on the British Academy-funded research project titled 'Dignity Without Danger: Collaboratively Analysing Stigma and Taboos to Develop Innovative Strategies to Address Menstrual Exclusion in Nepal'.