“Have Yourself A Merriam Little Christmas” Merriam, a career-oriented lexicographer from the city, returns to her small town for the holidays and meets Webster, a ruggedly handsome librarian, who shows her the true DEFINITION of Christmas.

Parents, please check your kids’ candy this Halloween. I’ve just found an ancient metal whistle with the inscription “QUIS EST ISTE QUI VENIT" inside a Snickers bar. I blew it and heard a note of infinite distance, and now I’m haunted by a figure in pale, fluttering draperies. Be safe.

A lovely endorsement on the back of this deed, "this deed was cancelled by cause it is forged" TNA C 147/1097

Accidentally took the mathematically perfect shot of our local cat.

Insult your local politicians, even your friends, like a true Shakespearean!

Today is the 47th anniversary of this clearly unimprovable photo, from a story so absurd that it shouldn’t be true, but is: the day a team of workers from British Waterways pulled the plug out of the Chesterfield Canal, and all the water emptied out

The price of sloe gin

Struggling to believe the sloes are ripe so early this year, but they are soft and have their waxy coating. Time to make gin (and worry about the weather)

ok cool not a big deal at all

[Blogged] The AI powered Library Search That Refused to Search - From Clarivate's Summon to Primo Research Assistant, content‑moderation layers meant mostly for chatbots are "quietly" blocking controversial topics from being searched aarontay.substack.com/p/the-ai-pow...

good morning. on the blog today, a piece i wrote in 2003 about love, marriage and what happens when "i love you" becomes meaningless to only one of you. it's about witnessing the end of someone else's relationship. please read to the addendum at the end michelecatblog.wordpress.com/2025/07/29/i...

En garde

Have you ever seen a book made entirely of silk? One item getting a lot of reading room attention recently is this "Livre de Prières." This book was manufactured with the Jacquard process, which relied on perforated punch cards to operate a loom, and is considered a precursor to early programming.

Time to update... nay downdate your slang!

Completely charmed by these fabric samples found in a file of Sir Louis Mallet's papers relating to Anglo-French trade agreements 1826-1877 #BalliolArchives

Whispering different possibilities for pronouncing 'Boger' in the manuscripts reading room like I'm playing a weird version of Bogies

Oooo. Goody. www.bbc.com/news/article...

I have been looking forward to this

Archive Monday: love these ink drawings from MS Tanner 118 in the Bodleian. Skeleton representing death with various scenes of a moralistic nature. Dress suggests late Elizabethan / early Jacobean. Scenes include royal court, hunting, duelling, trade/banking, religious/political persecution.

TIL AI is not only stealing our archives, it’s killing them. www.404media.co/ai-scraping-...

Working on file appraisal today. The first file I picked up had the unholy trio - elastic bands, post its, and metal fastenings 😬

A great chance to get out some of my favourites from the @ballioloxford.bsky.social archives and show off the catalogue conversion project.

þyrel, n.n: hole. (THUE-rell / ˈθy-rɛl) Image: De natura rerum; E France, 9th century; Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek, Msc.Nat.1, f. 26v. #OldEnglish #WOTD

Peace at last

When I searched to see if Mary Shelley and Jane Austen could have met in Bath, Google AI informed me that they were, in fact, sisters...

A damp, but fun Oxford Pride

lǣwede, adj: lay, i.e. not learned, not of the church; by gradual change of meaning it became modern English ‘lewd’. (LAE-weh-duh / ˈlæː-wɛ-də) #OldEnglish #WOTD

‘The feminine monarchie…’ by Charles Butler revolutionised beekeeping in 1609 by confirming the queen bee existed. It also includes musical notation of bee’s drones, recipes for marmalade, and descriptions of bees building little wax chapels in their hives! [Bee Coll. Cotton 01]

This Friday the Museum is open late for our Summer Late Night event. Both we and the Pitt Rivers Museum will be open until 10pm (free ticket required for entry) where we will have a host of activities, talks, tours, poetry, and film as well as a cash bar!

Balliol is delighted to announce that the Mastership of the College has been offered to Professor Seamus Perry, who has accepted and will assume the role in July 2026. www.balliol.ox.ac.uk/news/2025/ma...

Behold, my favourite Latin word of the day: floccipendentes 😂😂😂

That should do the trick.

and apologies to anyone getting a 502 on medieval.bodleian.ox.ac.uk as a result of the same scrapers

New at PB, Richard Ovenden (@richove.bsky.social‬) reviews Elyse Graham's “Book and Dagger” (Ecco), a book about the librarians and archivists who were involved in secret and dangerous tasks during WWII.

🦇 “Children of the night, be happy.” Even Dracula’s cracking a smile (internally) — because it’s World Goth Day. He’s not brooding, he’s celebrating aggressively. Tag your favorite creature of the night. #WorldGothDay #BelaLugosiApproves #DarkAsylumMemes #SmileButMakeItGoth #FangsOutForFun

If M.R. James wrote safety signage

today is World Bee Day. not to be confused with World Bidet

I completed my first 10k race, running as part of team #Balliol! The Oxford #TownAndGown10k. Huge fun, great atmosphere, and something I never thought I'd be able to do. Thanks to all those who supported. I've already decided to sign up for next year!

A University of Virginia professor enlisted students to document the messages—profane, hopeful, despairing—left on library carrels by previous generations and you can browse all 3000+ of them. daily.jstor.org/graffiti-lim...

What a surprise - the attack now is on the independence of the great Smithsonian Institution, which has strong connections to @ox.ac.uk. Asserting control over its curation is an attack on knowledge itself. Solidarity from Oxford’s Gardens, Libraries and Museums. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

It's spring at St Cross when the Holywell magnolia comes out

The power of on-screen representation 😻🐈‍⬛

You want to see an octopus riding a shark. 🎥: University of Auckland www.nytimes.com/2025/03/20/s...

‘which came first, the pun, or the research project?’ *academics, head hung low, whispering* ‘the… the pun’

New academic article: full text edition of a Victorian play on the Pendle witches, written by Emma, Lady Ribblesdale, previously unpublished, with biography of Emma #Pendle #witches #womenwriters Access via: muse.jhu.edu/issue/54108

Perhaps the best spam mail I've ever received. The subject line was 'Twilight of the trousers'.

Someone clever did this to a lamppost on Coverdale road and now I am disappointed that every lamppost doesn’t have one