At the time I was working at Williams Sonoma and there was a big red, white and blue display on the whiteboard in the back encouraging us to do our part for the country by selling as much kitchenware as we could
Whitney Christopher gave a great talk about using a tool called Blacklight to do this work. github.com/the-markup/b... #c4lib26 📚
At Cornell, librarians are investigating how vendors are tracking patrons and putting that information library catalog to better inform them. 📚 #code4lib #c4l26
Nightingale explicates the Black press as infrastructure (a robust system with redundancies, distribution) and explains how digitization has the potential to support or obscure that infrastructure. 📚 #code4lib #c4l26
Brandon Nightengale “Archives are an engineered system that decide what persists.” He reminds us that systems are series of affirmative decisions by people about what’s important. 📚 #c4l26
Aw dang I need to write three different "sorry, I suck, we'll have to find another way to solve your problem" emails this afternoon.
Thousands of institutions abandoned programs, ended or rewrote scholarships, closed down clubs and publications, all in pre-emptive compliance.
And you know why?
Mostly because they wanted to do it if they thought they could blame someone else for it.
The people of Mansfield, Connecticut are upset that students are allowed to vote in local elections. 🤡
Every time. One of the campus cops came to my office to talk through something and when I invited him to sit down, he said he couldn’t because he wouldn’t fit into the chair with his gun. What kind of a coward needs a gun in a library?
I am sorry and I have been there (am there). I’m always available to talk.
Oh no. That really hurts. I’m so sorry to hear that.
NEW: ProPublica went inside the detention center for immigrant families in Dilley, Texas.
Children held there told us about the anguish of being ripped from their lives in the United States and the fear of what comes next.
GOOD NEWS: Want to plant flowers this spring? Bloom Rhode Island is giving away $200,000 in grants to gardeners and nonprofits to plant publicly visible flowers (or to create cutting gardens) in PVD Central Falls, Woonsocket, Pawtucket or the denser areas of East PVD
bloomrhodeisland.org/grants
The DOJ’s Epstein document interface isn’t neutral.
It lets you examine fragments in exquisite detail while making the totality unseeable—Jameson's classic problem of cognitive mapping, rendered as UX. Folks often forget that distant reading is how you see the forest when power insists on trees.
This is who runs this account.
UConn Archives & Special Collections fellowship applications close January 30.
We offer $4,000 research fellowships & $1,500 travel grants supporting work with collections in social movements, literature, the arts, education, industry, and more.
Open to all researchers. Please boost! #nutmegsky
My solitary 2026 goal is to move to a walkable neighborhood so that school/childcare is less likely to be canceled and I’m not stuck inside with a feral raccoon three-year-old three days after a storm.
I also write deeds of gift that license published and unpublished works differently. Sure, keep copyright to your book (for a little while, at least)! But we're going to need you to give your correspondence and drafts etc. to the public domain if you want us to care for your materials indefinitely.
If you choose to retain copyright in published materials, we ask that you include a clear plan for those works to move to a more open license once their commercial life has reasonably passed. For some creators, published works continue to generate income for many years; for others, titles may be already out of print or no longer produce meaningful royalties. Because the long-term commercial value of most works declines substantially after an author’s death — often more quickly than expected — establishing a defined future date for more open use helps ensure that researchers are not indefinitely burdened with rights clearance while still respecting your interests and those of your heirs. In many cases, this transition occurs within 10 to 20 years after the author’s death, though the exact timing can be discussed.
My next quixotic archives quest is to dig everyone kicking and screaming toward a more copyleft IP regime. We have donors sign contracts anyway! You can make them do smart things with copyrights! (From the boilerplate that I ask curators to send potential donors).
UConn Archives & Special Collections fellowship applications close January 30.
We offer $4,000 research fellowships & $1,500 travel grants supporting work with collections in social movements, literature, the arts, education, industry, and more.
Open to all researchers. Please boost! #nutmegsky
🚨 Applications are open!
UConn Archives & Special Collections is offering $4,000 research fellowships + $1,500 travel grants for onsite archival work.
The application is quick and requires NO letters of reference. library.uconn.edu/location/asc...
I invite you to stop doomscrolling and experience this video of GWAR performing Pink Pony Club.
youtu.be/I5XR48KLE8I
“Why one small American town won’t stop stoning its residents to death,” an AO3 fic in which Isaac Chotiner interviews the guy who runs the lottery in Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”, is astounding. archiveofourown.org/works/73396436
In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me;
As He died to make us holy, let us die to make men free,
while God is marching on
This guy has won a free copy of Finnegan’s Wake.
When works become public domain, anyone can reimagine and reuse them.
🚂 The Little Engine That Could can be freely reinterpreted—like this video marrying pages of the 1930 book to a Librivox audio recording. 📚+🎤
Learn more ⤵️
blog.archive.org/2026/01/01/w...
#PublicDomainDay
We have lots of fellowship / travel money to give and not a lot of applications yet. Applications are due January 30. Apply! Spread the word!
Watch Lucy Dacus perform the women's suffrage and workers' rights anthem "Bread And Roses" at @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social's NYC mayoral inauguration
Tomorrow is public domain day!
In the US, most materials under copyright created through 1930 (and audio recordings created through 1925) join the public domain! 🎉
web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicd...
Also, James Marshall! We recently acquired his personal scrapbooks, which track his aesthetic sense and also his life with his partner William. Visit! Apply for a fellowship! library.uconn.edu/location/asc...
