iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Bob MacLean @bobmaclean.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Lovely. Great work. But I still much preferred it in the original ratty and knackered state

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Laura Cleaver @laurajcleaver.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Spaces for this are filling up, so if you want to attend book soon because we have limited space… #BookHistory

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

NASA picture of the day today is a real 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿beauty! This is a composite image of the ~5000yo Callanish Stones on the Isle of Lewis. The amazing Giuseppe Petricca has only gone and photographed the Sun at noon there, every few days, for a whole year. #Dedication 🔭🧪👌 ℹ️: science.nasa.gov/image-articl...

The imposing Callanish Stones stand talk with their shadows spanning out across the glass. It's a super clear sky, but looks cold. Above the central stone is a strange figure-of-8 shape of dots. This is the location of the Sun, at noon, on various different days across the year.

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Cambridge University Library @theul.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Not just supporting research — but leading it. Explore the poster display in our Catalogue Hall showcasing research projects led by our staff. Up now till 15 Sept 2026. Keep up-to-date with our research, join the University Library Research Institute mailing list: loom.ly/nqIpNxI

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Lambeth Palace Library @lampallib.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

📢Join us for a short talk on our current exhibition, its development and a closer look at a few highlights, on the 3rd and 5th September. This event is free and open to all. For more information and to book: www.lambethpalacelibrary.info/events/ [A66.1 R99 TP, FP]

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Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 16/07/2026

One of the great things about this piece of Pictish art is how well-observed it is. The goose is very goose-like, and the fish isn’t just a fish: it’s an accurate depiction of a salmon.

A side-on illustration of an Atlantic salmon from the National Digital Library of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. The fish is brownish-silver in colour, with brown spots abd a thin line running horizontally from its gills to its tail. It has five fins: on top there is a large dorsal fin, with a much smaller fin near the tail. The underside has a large fin near the base of the tail, one of a pair of pelvic fins in the middle of its body, and a pectoral fin just behind the gills.

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Shannon K. Supple @mazarine.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

Research fellowships at Yale’s Beinecke Library! 📜📚 First: Short-term Research Fellowship (2027-2028) For anyone not a student. (Students: see next post.) Application deadline is August 15, 2026. beinecke.library.yale.edu/programs/fel...

beinecke.library.yale.edu

Short-term Research Fellowships

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Digital Scholarship @ British Library @bldigischol.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

EThOS platform restored! 'Following restoration work, all metadata records previously available on EThOS have now been restored, along with an additional 14,000 records added since the service was taken offline' - more to come www.bl.uk/stories/news...

bl.uk

EThOS records restored

We are pleased to share that EThOS (E-Theses Online Service) is now available again following restoration work after the cyber-attack.

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Sihong Lin @sihonglin.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

Glasgow is hiring a lecturer in medieval history (c.800-1500) on an open-ended basis. We are a lovely bunch in the medieval area, would be great to have a new colleague! www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DSF052/l...

jobs.ac.uk

Lecturer in Medieval History (Research & Teaching Track) at University of Glasgow

Looking for a new job opportunity in academia? Check out this job opening for a Lecturer in Medieval History (Research & Teaching Track) on jobs.ac.uk!

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Jay Moschella @jaymoschella.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

Fun new acquisition here at the Boston Public Library. This is a 1476 edition of Eusebius of Caesarea's church history, printed in Rome. We bought this book for basically one reason only -- a fantastic printing error that left an impression on one page from a single piece of "fallen type."

The full opening of the book, showing the fallen type in the lower-right corner

The piece of type, in detail. You can see the full body of the type, shown from the side, as its lays across the surface of the locked type. The black part on the left is the letter itself. The body of the type has been drilled through, which is evidenced by the white circle in the middle. The purpose of drilling through type is still not entirely understood.

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Prof. Dimitra Fimi @dimitrafimi.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

When I caveat research points about Tolkien (e.g. there’s no evidence that he knew/meant that - that we *know* of) is because there’s still primary material out there we haven’t seen yet. This is a case in point: newly discovered letter by Tolkien to be sold by Christie’s 1/2

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CILIP Rare Books and Special Collections Group @ciliprarebooks.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

#RBSCG26 Registrations are OPEN! This year's conference, on the theme 'A Sense of Place: Collections and Communities in Context', will take place at St John's College, Cambridge, 9th-11th September 2026. View the programme and book a place via our website: www.cilip.org.uk/members/grou...

static.klipy.com

Bright Yellow 'Open for Business' Sign

ALT: Bright Yellow 'Open for Business' Sign

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nickyrvs.bsky.social @nickyrvs.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

americanhistory.si.edu/support/obje... If you believe you have an item of interest, please send a detailed description with photos to inquiry@si.edu

americanhistory.si.edu

Object Donations

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John Self @john-self.bsky.social · 11/07/2025

The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa, translated by Margaret Jull Costa. Published by the Half Pint Press, London, 2017. There were only 50 copies of this made for sale (out of a total run of 80), so I thought I’d share as much of it as I can. Numbering of fragments follows the 1982 edition.

Cardboard box letterpressed with the title and author

Back of box stating 80 copies were made of which 50 were available to buy. This is copy number 37.

The box opened. Inside are objects and documents and scraps of things, the ephemera of a life, each printed with one of the fragments of text that make up The Book of Disquiet.

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UofGlasgow Archives & Special Collections @uofglasgowasc.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

We have a new guest blog post by Visiting Research Fellow Steven J. Livesey: "Three early copies of Gilles of Corbeil’s “Versus de urinis”: examining provenance". 🔎 Check it out here:

universityofglasgowlibrary.wordpress.com

Three early copies of Gilles of Corbeil's "Versus de urinis": examining provenance

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UofGlasgow Archives & Special Collections @uofglasgowasc.bsky.social · 13/06/2026

'The string alphabet remains a remarkable chapter in the development of tactile literacy in Scotland' Dr Taylor Hare, Visiting Research Fellow, investigates the history of raised-letter printing in Glasgow. Read his full guest blog exploring his findings.

buff.ly

The String Alphabet in Nineteenth-Century Glasgow

Guest blog by Dr.Taylor Hare, Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Glasgow Archives & Special Collections. Dr Hare is a Postdoctoral Fellow in English Literature at Baylor University (…

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Steven Van Impe @svanimpe.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

First #bookhistory post of the year. Some books simply scream for a thread! We have two copies of the same #EarlyModern edition. Why would we want to collect two copies of the same book, you ask? Read on! EHC Antwerp, K 54092 copy 1 and 2. [1/16] 📜 💙📚

Two title pages of the same book, showing their likeness.

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Andrew Ayton @andrewayton.bsky.social · 06/06/2026

Have just finished this book & in complete agreement with the TLS review; highly recommended. Congratulations @pittsmike.bsky.social on a splendid achievement.

First 2000 characters of:

How Easter Island was cut off from its past
Christina Thompson’s review of Mike Pitts
‘Island at the Edge of the World
The forgotten history of Easter Island’. 384pp. Bloomsbury. E25.
Over the course of three centuries, the inhabitants of Easter Island, or Rapa Nui, carved, transported and erected about 400 stone statues, the largest of them weighing in at more than eighty tons. This involved, as Mike Pitts puts it, "a sequence of major operations, with many opportunities for something to go wrong".
Cut from the living rock with nothing more than stone tools, the statues were transported for miles over a hilly land-scape, levered up onto stone plinths or bases, and crowned with specially fitted stone topknots, each weighing another seven or eight tons.
The evidence for this tremendous labour is everywhere on Easter Island, but, writes Pitts, "We have almost no evidence of how it was done". Or why. Or when.
Or by whom exactly. None of this has ever stopped anyone from trying to unravel what has come to be known as "the mystery of Easter Island".
The reason there is so much uncertainty surrounding the history of Easter Island is not that it is so terribly ancient; the entire human history of the island stretches back less than 1,000 years. Rather, it is because that history is marked by a radical discontinuity that began not in some moment of prehistoric upheaval or after the first European contact in 1722, but with a series of events in the southern hemispheric
effectively cut off modern Rapa Nui from the knowledge of its own past.
In the autumn of 1862, three Chilean ships sailed to the island from Peru, returning with 507 islanders described as
"colonists", who were sold as servants and labourers in the port of Callao. In December, a further eight ships made the journey, returning with hundreds more kidnapped islanders bound for South American plantations and guano mines.
These in turn were followed by yet more ships. It was a short-li…

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Glenn Fleishman @glennf.com · 05/06/2026

I want to compliment Sam Regal, Editor of Printing History (the Journal of the American Printing History Association) for being braver and franker in his introduction to the current issue about American democracy than nearly all mainstream media in this country.

The pomp and circumstance accompanying the 250th anniversary of the United States—its superficial patriotism and the quasi-religious fervor it tends to inspire—stand in ironic contrast to the radical resistance at the core of the nation's founding. In the US of 2026, activists protesting the Trump administration's various violences are explicitly targeted and, in some cases, exterminated. Speech is policed and, in a number of sectors including the milieu of higher education, controlled by the State's pocketbook. The 1776 printing of the Declaration of Independence was an act of sedition, and that fundamental aspect of our history is in dramatic misalignment with the current political agenda.
The myth of American exceptionalism has presently achieved new grotesqueries. The snake of it roils, squirms, and expands to encompass every institution and individual it can manage to flatten, to reduce in its acids. The Declaration's dissonances— most evocatively, its espousing of the equality of man set against its conspicuous omission of enslaved peoples—are representative of a foundational national myopia and are predictive of our viciously xenophobic present.
And so we must ask: as we mark the Semiquincentennial, what exactly are we celebrating? Printing History 38 contextualizes this question by interrogating influential instances of seditious printing, broadly defined.

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BOO! k HistoriAAAH 🎃 @book-historia.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

If you’re looking for something to do this Saturday, come on by the Winterthur Library for our second annual Tattoo Inspiration Open House! 💪 It runs 11-2, and dozens of gorgeous special collections items will be on show: www.winterthur.org/calendar/art...

Allie’s tattooed arm next to one of the books that inspired one of the tattoos

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Ennius @enniusredloeb.bsky.social · 23/05/2026

Illuminator at work, surrounded by the tools of his trade BnF MS Latin 4915; Mare historiarum ab orbe condito ad annum Christi 1250, authore Joanne de Columma; 15th century; f.1r @gallicabnf.bsky.social

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This Is My Glasgow @thisismyglasgow.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

Carving of HMS Agamemnon on a Clydebank tenement. Built by William Beardmore and Company, when it was launched in 1906, it was the largest warship built on the Clyde up until that point. #glasgow #clydebank #architecture #sculpture #publicart

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McNaughtan's Bookshop @mcnaughtans.co.uk · 21/05/2026

That letter ‘S’ after the apostrophe on the top line is a bit of an afterthought, J. Boyle, printer of Aberdeen. He perpetrated this typographical horror in 1788 so I’ve probably left it a bit late to complain.

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Steven Van Impe @svanimpe.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

Next week, we'll be launching a new call for applications for the #Nottebohm travel fund for #bookhistory research in Antwerp. Keep your eyes open!

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Steven Van Impe @svanimpe.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

Prof. Pedro Rueda received a Nottebohm scholarship to research the #EarlyModern trade in movable type between #Antwerp, Seville and Spanish America. He focused on the bookseller Tomás López de Haro, who had connections in Leiden, Antwerp and Seville. #bookhistory

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Alice Wickenden @awickenden.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

Giving a lecture on some ideas about provenance and (un)writing names in books at the @obs1922.bsky.social next Thursday. Zoom link also available for anyone keen!

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Katie Collins @spissatella.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

Audited one of my favourite drawers today. As far as I can tell there was an entire generation of past mollusc curators who communicated entirely by means of passive-aggressive drawer notes to each other

A drawer of fossil molluscs mounted on cards taken from a pre-1980s display. In the middle is a curatorial note in red pen that says "Don't fumble with these until we find out smarting of glue they are stuck down with" and underneath in a different smaller hand in black ink "yes I will! Fumble fumble fumble - so there!". Several additional notes in the second hand are scattered in the drawer with arrows pointing to various specimens. They all read "fumble fumble fumble".

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The Library of Trinity College Dublin @tcdlibrary.bsky.social · 11/05/2026

Job alert! 📢The Library of Trinity College Dublin is seeking an experienced #Archivist to work on the archive of the war correspondent and author Robert Fisk. Search "Project Archivist" on lnkd.in/epe82VKC to apply. Closing date 12:00, 27th May 2026.

A photo of Robert Fisk. He is wearing glasses, a striped shirt and a green jumper.

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Alan Rusbridger @arusbridger.bsky.social · 09/05/2026

A wall of crypto money is powering Nigel Farage, both politically and personally. And much of the British media just shrugs app.prospectmagazine.co.uk/story/73421/...

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Melanie Walsh @mellymeldubs.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

The author sent me a copy, and it's really something to behold in person.

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Bob MacLean @bobmaclean.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

Well done Daryl. I’m looking forward to having a read through

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Daryl Green @ilikeoldbooks.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

word is out! contributors have been getting their copies while I was on annual leave and EHOBS v. 1 (parts 1 AND 2) are now out in the wild! Huge thanks to @edinburghup.bsky.social , my co-editors and ALL the contributors to this multi-decade endeavour edinburghuniversitypress.com/series-the-e...

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Helen Gittos @helengittos.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

This is cool! A copy of Bede's History, written in Nonantola, Italy in the early C9th, with an Old English version of Caedmon's hymn in the main body of the text rather than in the margins. www.theguardian.com/books/2026/a...

theguardian.com

Lost copy of seventh-century poem in Old English discovered at Rome library

Dublin scholars find 1,200-year-old manuscript of Caedmon’s Hymn composed by Northumbrian cattle herder

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Dr Bryony Coombs @bryonycoombs.bsky.social · 26/04/2026

I came across this while looking for something else, but look at the folio hanging up to dry and the ink splatters where the scribe has absent mindedly refilled his quill and missed the ink horn...so good! [Paris. Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, Ms-638 réserve, f.17v]

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Bob MacLean @bobmaclean.bsky.social · 25/04/2026

First hill of the year. A beautiful day up Beinn Fhionnlaidh

Panoramic view from summit of Beinn Fhionnlaidh. Blue skies and sunshine

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Holly Fletcher @drhollyfletcher.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

It seems that books are a bit like buses... 'Fat Bodies in Early Modern Europe' edited by Christine Ott, @jillburke.bsky.social and me is out now!! #EarlyModern Also including contributions from Alex Pyrges, Andrea Baldan, @scarlettgauthor.bsky.social, Pablo García Piñar, and Roberta Colbertaldo

Book cover for 'Fat Bodies in Early Modern Europe' edited by Holly Fletcher, Christine Ott and Jill Burke, showing the title and editors' names on a maroon, floral background.

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Bob MacLean @bobmaclean.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

That’s just awful. Nothing less. Good grief

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The Bibliographical Society of America @bibsocamer.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

We are now accepting submissions for the Mitchell Prize for research on British serials! 📖🏆 Awarded every three years, the prize brings a cash award 💵of $1,000 and a year’s membership in the Society. Link to learn more and submit in bio 🔗

White text on a magenta background with information about a publication prize. Headline text at the top reads, "Apply for the William L. Mitchell Prize by 15 August." Paragraph text at the bottom reads, "The Prize serves as an encouragement to scholars engaged in bibliographical scholarship on 18th-century periodicals published in English or in any language (including Indigenous languages) within the British Isles, its colonies, former colonies, and occupied territories."

Dark pink text on a light pink background outlining submission requirements for the Mitchell Prize and instructions to use the link in the bio for more information.

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Leo Cadogan @leocadogan.com · 13/04/2026

A feather in the opening of an incunable. Would be very interested to know what bird this came from.

Small yellow and black variegated bird feather in the gutter of a book.

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