As AI training data has been largely limited to digital materials, this piece also reinforces the notion that claims about large language models encompassing anything like the entirety of human knowledge are vastly overblown

I’ve written a piece on the curious lack of media and political interest in the issues faced by our national @britishlibrary.bsky.social. This is strange given we live in a world where ideas, knowledge and research are a long-term source of innovation and insight www.cityam.com/the-british-...

How new AI library "tools" serve "the political project to devalue" or erase the work of librarians, teachers, and scientists: www.404media.co/ai-is-superc...

History Has Left The Building www.meidasplus.com/p/history-ha...

As if....

very interesting what is not allowed these days. in this case, basic archiving of real videos www.404media.co/apple-banned...

More on the failures/erasures that ai chatbots introduce into library search tools aarontay.substack.com/p/the-ai-pow...

When a president gets to decide what counts as American history www.washingtonpost.com/entertainmen...

Librarians are finding that their AI assisted commercially produced search tools are providing no search results for topics like Tulsa race riot, Covid, January 6, Gaza War, lynching and history of genocides acrlog.org/2025/07/21/w...

"Determined not to let this stage of American history become “lost culture”, the publishers believe that old-fashioned print is still the best way to preserve for the future" www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/culture/6952...

It’s so devastating to watch Depp v. Heard happen over and over again, pushing more women into conservatism and damaging the cultural narratives around sexual harassment, violence, and abuse each time open.substack.com/pub/taylorlo...

Historical context? In 2003 the editor of a chapter I contributed to a volume on bibliography in literature informed me that I could not use the phrase “feminist literary bibliography” in the title as such a thing did not exist.

The People Carrying Out Musk’s Plans at DOGE www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

My 2017 essay on the disappearance of government information (and attempts to save it) under the first Trump administration is creepily relevant: works.hcommons.org/records/aytt...

Like I was saying, we are losing control over the film, music, books, games, etc that we can now only rent

"just as the arts are more than mere nutrients, the medium is more than a delivery system: it has an aesthetic and a psychology of its own" www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

Defying the Algorithm #25

If ever there were an opportune moment to make the case for the value of higher education and for the Dept of Education this would seem to be it

When neither my room key nor my partner's could get us back into our hotel room it took a security guard then a maintenance guy & finally someone who could reprogram the lock to get us back in. Sometimes analog is just simpler

The relentless contraction of our ability to own and maintain control over the music, films, books, games and other media that we now merely rent arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024...

The importance of national archives: www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2...

THIS is why we wrote this. archive.is/2024.10.31-1...

Fortunately (or perhaps sadly), recent preparations to protect scientific and other information from potential erasure or manipulation by the incoming Trump administration are benefitting from the experience and infrastructure created during his last administration. www.forbes.com/sites/dougla...