iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Travis Wagner (they/them) @drtlwagner.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

When I say “AI could never” this is absolutely what I mean

Travis Wagner (they/them) @drtlwagner.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

As part of starting the (Un)Dead Media Lab this fall w/ @ryancordell.org is getting old Clip Art Libraries up and running on computers for people to interact with. I ran across this "Rainbow of Information" image and I will definitely be using it in my syllabus next time I teach Queering Information

051

Travis Wagner (they/them) @drtlwagner.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

If you haven’t had the fortune of seeing @jameshodges.net talk about his work it is always a good time and it is incredible to see him talk through the deeply social realities of engaging with technology in a historic way. Put simply, this talk is gonna rip!

165

Travis Wagner (they/them) @drtlwagner.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

My partner and I went to a local antique store and I found this incredible Gravedigger monster truck mug. I’m far too scared to use it and run the risk of causing wear so I guess it will hold my dry erase markers

020

Reposted by Travis Wagner (they/them)

Ryan Cordell @ryancordell.org · 27/08/2026

Ok I can share—today MSLIS student Nadja Robot donated a teletype machine to @skeuomorphpress.org’s Undead Media Lab But this is not just any teletype—it’s the one Michael S. Hart used to digitize the Declaration of Independence & Alice in Wonderland—the 1st texts in what became Project Gutenberg

1033792

Travis Wagner (they/them) @drtlwagner.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

The stylus is a bit dysfunctional but otherwise this SEGA Pico is working and will be part of the (Un)dead Media Lab. Particularly excited to see it break the brains of the students that @ryancordell.org teaches in Booklab

061

Travis Wagner (they/them) @drtlwagner.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

The recent episode of Ted Lasso made me want to revisit the Susan Boyle audition clip on YouTube for a nostalgia bump and when it popped up with an "uploaded 17 years ago" note that nostalgia bump turned into a full on punch 💀

030

Travis Wagner (they/them) @drtlwagner.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

Bought it specifically for All Star by Smash Mouth 💀

010

Travis Wagner (they/them) @drtlwagner.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

It was such a joy to talk through this paper and wish it was an approach more journals took!

032

Travis Wagner (they/them) @drtlwagner.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

I found the screen grab of a grim reaper from a VHS tape I digitized years ago, but can't seem to find the digitized tape itself. Either way I'm going to pitch it as an unofficial mascot for the Undead Media Lab that I am co-launching with @ryancordell.org this fall 💀

image of a grim reaper from digitized VHS tape with ephemeral decay from tape wear

271

Reposted by Travis Wagner (they/them)

Dr Rebecca Williams @augustaquarius.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

CFP: Australian Feminist Studies Special Issue on Revising the Record: Collecting, preserving and representing women's experiences across heritage, cultural and digital context Abstract deadline 02 October 2026 Manuscript deadline 29 May 2027 think.taylorandfrancis.com/special_issu...

think.taylorandfrancis.com

Revising the Record: Collecting, preserving and representing women’s experiences across heritage, cultural and digital context

Revising the Record: Collecting, preserving and representing women's experiences across heritage, cultural and digital context

01615

Travis Wagner (they/them) @drtlwagner.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

Sure, I could be prepping syllabi for the impending semester and doing writing, but what I have instead decided to finally get around to playing Xenogears

030

Travis Wagner (they/them) @drtlwagner.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

Happy to announce that my personal favorite article to date is out! If you are interested in understanding how the precarity of born-digital media artifacts, the imagination of queer folks, and Furby tell us something about information worldbuilding, then you should read this! tinyurl.com/4afvv7sm

tinyurl.com

‘It often sits unnoticed or unpurchased for years, holding who knows how many secrets’: Furby as queer archival artefact | Intellect

This article explores the parallel relationships between the rise of digitally mediated culture and the viral toy Furby with a specific orientation towards the object’s relationship to queer cultures ...

193

Travis Wagner (they/them) @drtlwagner.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

I have joked about destroying a book at the beginning of my archives and digital preservation courses as a sort of metaphor for the inability to save everything. Obviously different than the AI consuming text issue but books are weeded and books are sometimes destroyed.

050

Reposted by Travis Wagner (they/them)

Matthew Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

Terry Belanger would begin his Rare Book School classes by physically destroying/dismantling a (well-chosen) old book. This is NOT the same as what Anthropic is doing! But there is a popular culture of preciousness around books that is belied by the material realities of their circumstances. +

66618

Reposted by Travis Wagner (they/them)

murmurations @murmurationsjrnl.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

🪶New in Murmurations: K.R. Roberto's “Operationalizing Bias.” In this piece, the author describes "the problems in classification that I was personally experiencing" during an LIS PhD program, "namely, the ways in which my transness inexplicably led to medical issues and confused classmates."

1104

Reposted by Travis Wagner (they/them)

Alice Averlong 🏳️‍⚧️ @alice.averlong.com · 14/07/2026

It's International Non-Binary People's Day! Celebrated here, on my Pentium with VGAPride.

A beige 90s computer displaying the non-binary flag (four horizontal stripes, of yellow, white, purple, and black)

1834241088

Travis Wagner (they/them) @drtlwagner.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

Favorite: .wad Least favorite: .key Two very different proprietary formats that bring very different feelings to the world

010

Reposted by Travis Wagner (they/them)

Melo @letitmelo.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

2555611253

Travis Wagner (they/them) @drtlwagner.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

Riffing on a few potential logos/ads for the Undead Media Lab, but honestly we might have struck gold already 📺👾

060

Reposted by Travis Wagner (they/them)

iSchool at Illinois @ischoolui.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

Congratulations to #iSchoolUI Assistant Professor @drtlwagner.bsky.social, recipient of the 2026 ASIS&T James M. Cretsos Leadership Award! 🎉 The award honors a new ASIS&T member who has demonstrated outstanding leadership in professional ASIS&T activities. ▶️ bit.ly/3RfeWxS

072

Travis Wagner (they/them) @drtlwagner.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

Truly honored to be one of the first contributors to this new journal. I can’t wait to see it expand and evolve and to see what other birds get featured in promotional posts!

3124

Reposted by Travis Wagner (they/them)

Lady Froldmagen (she/her) @zinelib.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

My scholar alert on zines turned up this nerdy gem from LIS professor @vamanu.bsky.social "the materiality of DIY zines is not merely a technical property but an onto-political dimension" journals.library.ualberta.ca/ojs.cais-acs... 📚

journals.library.ualberta.ca

The actuality of the obsolete: Inscriptions, traces, and the documentary life of zines | Proceedings of the Annual Conference of CAIS / Actes du congrès annuel de l'ACSI

2164

Reposted by Travis Wagner (they/them)

Shannon Mattern @shannonmattern.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

Our Misfits book is off to the printer! Our designer, my friend Elaine Lopez, said she always wanted an opportunity to use Roger Excoffon's Banco (of Thrasher fame) in a project — and THIS WAS HER CHANCE! 😜

Colophon / Copyright page -- yellow text on black background
Title page: large display font for Misfit title - black text on yellow background

Table of Contents - black text on yellow background - INTRODUCTION
SHANNON MATTERN
A Miscellany of Misfittery:
Defying Containment and Classification in an Age of Compliance
UNORTHODOX INQUIRY
24
SAM MANDANI
are stupid questions all that stupid? an exploration
38
LUCAS VAQUEIRO AND JUDY PARK LEE
Frequently Asked
Questions
50
KATRINA KAPLAN
Unfinished Work: A School
Library Research Assignment for Misfits
62
SAM BUTIN
Misfits of Purpose
70
AMANDA BELANTARA
Misfit Visions Made Real
HANNAH YUKIKO PIERCE
Beyond Keyword/Author/Title/ Subject: Towards a Searchable Database for Artists' Books in
Library Collections
CROSS REFERENCES #1
88
KAMEELAH JANAN RASHEED
some notes on the misfit
90
GAVIN MARCUS
Chaos Star

Mint green + pink pages - black text: ALTER FORMATS
94
DAVID ISAAC HECHT
What's on the Container?
About the Misfit Cover
98
DRE JÁCOME
earthseed
108
MIA VASQUEZ
Overheard Rikers: An Oral-Visual Archive of Conditions
120
J. FAYE YUAN |袁洁扉
The Afterlives of Stamps:
A Visual Oral History
136 CEN LIU
Untranscribability:
An Investigation Into Chinese Language, Cultural Memories, and Cataloging
m
EXTRAORDINARY FIGURES
156
RACHEL MEADE SMITH
198
MELISSA MINNICH
Belonging in the Official Annals
The Sun is a Lie,
of Municipal History
the Moon is the Truth

202
ANNE LEONARD
170
KAREN MAINENTI
Ecospheric Walks in a
The Beauty Misfit Index:
More-than-Human New York
Selected Entries from the NYPL
Picture Collection
178
NICOLE CHENG
Searching for Misfit Kin

My intro: black page w/ chapter title in yellow: A Miscellany of Misfittery:
Defying Containment and Classification in an Age of Compliance

Bottom: yellow page, black text - picture of oarweed - text: "In a metal cabinet at the New York Botanical Garden's herbarium is an 11.5" by 16.5" sheet of archival-quality paper onto which is mounted a Laminaria digitata, a species of kelp commonly known as oarweed. Before it was harvested from its aquatic habitat on the shores of Seguin Island, Maine, on August 29, 1900, the specimen's long, smooth, glossy, olive-brown segments-shaped like the fingers of a hand (hence, digitata)-undulated in the Atlantic currents. Here, those fronds, which can grow up to ten feet in length, are folded, confined to the boundaries of their mounting substrate, and held in place with a loose net of bright green string. At the center of the archival sheet, blades radiate outward from a palm-like nucleus connected to a long stipe, or stalk, that is coiled for..."

2406

Reposted by Travis Wagner (they/them)

Rachel Hoopsick, PhD, MS, MPH, MCHES @rachelhoopsick.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

If you’re a healthcare provider or community health worker and you’ve worked with women who use drugs, consider participating in my PhD student’s dissertation research to understand more about the barriers and opportunities for working together: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Collaboration Between
Healthcare Providers and
Community Health Workers to Address Methamphetamine or Other Substance Use in Womer
SCAN THE ELIGIBILITY
FORM BELOW
Eligibilty Criterias:
• At least 18 years old
• Fluent in English
• 1+ year of experience as a Healthcare Provider (HCP) or
Community Health Worker (CHW)
• Experience working directly with women of reproductive age who use methamphetamine or other substances (currently or in the past)
HCPs include doctors (family medicine, addiction medicine, OBs/GYNs), nurses (LNPs, RNs), psychiatrists
MORE INFORMATION
Email: thsauda2@illinois.edu

022

Reposted by Travis Wagner (they/them)

Jordan S. Carroll 🌹 @jordanscarroll.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

A+ book cover, no notes

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God skeleton in flames

06111

Travis Wagner (they/them) @drtlwagner.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

I noticed this lil dude on the side of a Maxwell home recording tape I was digitizing and have to convince @ryancordell.org that we should riff on it as part of our eventual logo/design for the Undead Media Lab

3111

Travis Wagner (they/them) @drtlwagner.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

Ask me how recruitment is going for my current research project 🙃

200

Travis Wagner (they/them) @drtlwagner.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

Say what you will about Urbana-Champaign, but in no other town/city that I have lived in have I seen a person with a full bumper decal on their car reading "See You, Space Cowboy..."

041

Travis Wagner (they/them) @drtlwagner.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

It is the last day of my Preserving Information Resources through Media Archaeology class and students are reading @jameshodges.net new article on historicizing data from Surfrider. The article is 🔥 or perhaps more accurately 🌊. Either way, it is worth your time! www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1...

tandfonline.com

Historicising web-based environmental data dashboards: surfrider.org, 1997-2025

Web-based data dashboards provide critical points of access for users hoping to gain knowledge concerning environmental phenomena, yet their historical development has not been explicitly tracked i...

181

Travis Wagner (they/them) @drtlwagner.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

I got to do some early use tests for the Undead Media Lab that I am co-creating with @ryancordell.org It was great to sent he students gravitate to both familiar and unfamiliar technologies and chat about how we might use it as it takes a more official form

082

Reposted by Travis Wagner (they/them)

Sarah Polkinghorne @sarahpolk.bsky.social · 25/05/2026

Only *slightly* overshadowed by the papal encyclical...the proceedings for next week's ISIC (Information Seeking in Context) conference have just been published. Open access. Really intriguing work here! publicera.kb.se/ir

publicera.kb.se

Information Research an international electronic journal

Information Research is a freely available, international, scholarly journal, dedicated to making accessible the results of research across a wide range of information-related disciplines.

032

Travis Wagner (they/them) @drtlwagner.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

Didn't want to wade into the citation discourse, but just reviewed an article playing fast and loose with what my own work was about. It is necessary to read the stuff you cite beyond the title and, preferably, the abstract. I get it, publish or perish is real, but so is citational misinformation.

020

Travis Wagner (they/them) @drtlwagner.bsky.social · 05/05/2026

Time to spend a few hours in floppy disk prez documentation 💾👾

000

Reposted by Travis Wagner (they/them)

Ryan Cordell @ryancordell.org · 28/04/2026

CU folks: if we don’t blow away tonight, remember we’ve got Jess Whyte speaking in our “Media Necromancy” series @skeuomorphpress.org tomorrow—“What the Disk Remembers: Traces, Forensics, and Care in Media Recovery" ischool.illinois.edu/news-events/...

ischool.illinois.edu

"Media Necromancy" Series: Jess Whyte

Jess Whyte, digital assets librarian at the university of Toronto, will present "What the Disk Remembers: Traces, Forensics, and Care in Media Recovery" as part of the "Media Necromancy" Series at Ske...

063

Reposted by Travis Wagner (they/them)

DLC+ @dlcplus.org · 27/04/2026

After a short break, we'll turn to our NOSTALGIA panel. Presenters include Ryan Cordell @ryancordell.org, Sabina Fazli, Tegan Pyke @tegan.online, Justine Provino, and Travis L. Wager @drtlwagner.bsky.social

123

Reposted by Travis Wagner (they/them)

James A. Hodges @jameshodges.net · 27/04/2026

🚨BIG NEWS🚨 I just signed a contact with MIT Press for my book "Psychedelic Software" 🥳 We all know the 60s counterculture influenced home computing conceptually, but this book uses digital forensics to show how hippie theories of consciousness were baked into software at a technical level too

2448

Travis Wagner (they/them) @drtlwagner.bsky.social · 27/04/2026

Soon to be set up is a CRT which will help with era-specific media preservation and, hopefully, a bit of game/digital worlds emulation as well 😎

0102

Travis Wagner (they/them) @drtlwagner.bsky.social · 23/04/2026

Is reading the intro to Browne and Nash' Queer Methods and Methodologies in an airport T.G.I. Friday's a form of praxis?

210

Travis Wagner (they/them) @drtlwagner.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

Excited to be working on this and to slowly add smaller and weirder screens to the mix 💀💀📼📼

191

Reposted by Travis Wagner (they/them)

Judge You Harshly 🦋✌️🤟🖖🌈 @judgeyouharshly.bsky.social · 10/04/2026

I wanna watch the Artemis landing on this.

4988832616

Travis Wagner (they/them) @drtlwagner.bsky.social · 10/04/2026

The students broke a mini-cassette in the process, which I repeatedly assured them was the most media archaeological thing they could have done 📼🔥

0142

Travis Wagner (they/them) @drtlwagner.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

Ah, yes, my favorite time of the semester where I am grateful to have scheduled guest lectures for my classes, but have also forgotten that I agreed to give guest lectures for others as well.

020

Reposted by Travis Wagner (they/them)

bri watson 🐝 @brimwats.com · 30/03/2026

it was such a delight putting together this Homosaurus history and maintenance article with D (a fantastic steward), Keahi, @marikac4.bsky.social Michael, Crystal & @drtlwagner.bsky.social ! This is also the best recounting of the Homosaurus history to date--if we don't answer it here, let us know!

0122

Reposted by Travis Wagner (they/them)

bri watson 🐝 @brimwats.com · 18/03/2026

www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2026/seeking... this is absolutely INCREDIBLE work--reading 20 years of LC decisions!

inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org

Seeking Approval, Confronting Objectivity: Neutrality in the Library of Congress Subject Headings Approval Process – In the Library with the Lead Pipe

063

Reposted by Travis Wagner (they/them)

Ryan Cordell @ryancordell.org · 12/03/2026

I’m excited to be coordinating a new @ischoolui.bsky.social program The Summer Intensive will offer 6 courses over 2 weeks in May & June this year—SI weeks will also include a range of academic, professional, & social events—we are hoping to cultivate real "summer camp for LIS nerds vibes"

ischool.illinois.edu

iSchool launches Summer Intensive

This summer, iSchool students will have the opportunity to enroll in in select courses through the new Summer Intensive pilot program, which will take place on campus over the course of two weeks. Eac...

32611

Reposted by Travis Wagner (they/them)

Melissa Wong @melissawong.bsky.social · 12/03/2026

Excited to share our newest CFP! Library Trends 75.3: Evidence-based Practices for eLearning in Information Organizations Proposals are due April 3, 2026. The complete CFP, including information on how to submit a proposal, is available at tinyurl.com/mwk429vh

tinyurl.com

CFP - Library Trends 75.3 Evidence-based Practices for eLearning in Libraries

CFP – Library Trends 75.3 Evidence-based Practices for eLearning in Information Organizations Library Trends invites proposals for issue on Evidence-based Practices for eLearning in Information Orga...

022