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Fletcher Durant

@fletcherdurant.bsky.social
1.3K followers 920 following 617 posts

Preservation : Conservation : Academic Libraries : Archives : Stuff

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Reposted by Fletcher Durant
Patricia Hswe @pmhswe.bsky.social · 19h
Friends, please check out this new report on community-based archives, "Powerful But Precarious," linked from the Mellon website. A participatory action research study, it provides a rich portrait of these organizations—their aspirations, wants, and resilience. Enjoy! www.mellon.org/features/com...
mellon.org
Mellon Foundation
The Mellon Foundation makes grants to actively unlock the power in the arts and humanities that helps connect us all.
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Nina Beguš @ninabegus.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Delivering dinosaurs for exhibit at the Boston Museum of Science. Arthur Pollock, 1984
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Melanie Walsh @mellymeldubs.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
You can make flipbook GIFs 🤩 Play with it here: hadro.github.io/flipbook/#m=...
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Simon is on strike ✊🏻 @simonxix.com · 28/09/2026
Historic England outsourced their digital image provision to a third-party company. Then the company went bust and now all their images are inaccessible. Tell me again how outsourcing to the private sector is sustainable?
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Craig Pittman @craigtimes.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Three #Florida counties declare a state of emergency over outbreak of dengue fever. The 3 Tampa Bay counties have reported 169 cases as of Sept. 19. www.tampabay.com/news/health/...
tampabay.com
Hillsborough, Pasco and Pinellas counties issue states of emergency over dengue fever
Tampa Bay has reported 169 cases, including 160 in Hillsborough, seven in Pinellas and two in Pasco counties as of Sept. 19.
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the Mountain Goats @themountaingoats.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Jackie Jackson died two days ago. His death did not get the fanfare that the big celebrities get but I assure you he was no less than any of them: a titan astride the earth. In this thread, a few of the songs he played bass on. You know these songs. You know their bass parts. youtu.be/DKVB_CtU8XQ
youtu.be
Pressure Drop
YouTube video by Toots & The Maytals - Topic
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Tim Carmody @tcarmody.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Some people cannot tolerate any physical violence to books but imo if you bought it it’s yours
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Sarah E. Bond @sarahebond.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
The Iowa City Public library has framed art 🖼️ that you can check out and hang on your wall for a few months. And that is cool.
Art on the wall of a public library with a little boy looking at the art
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scott b. weingart @scottbot.net · 22/09/2026
Join my team! Help us figure out how to be as careful stewards of today's born-digital archives of state as we've been for physical archives over the last 200 years. Seeking experience in digital archives/collections/preservation, or related cultural heritage work. Due 10/6. Up to $91k.
jobs.virginia.gov
Born-Digital Collections Coordinator #00220 - Richmond, Virginia, United States
Title: Born-Digital Collections Coordinator #00220 State Role Title: Library Specialist III Hiring Range: Commensurate with experience up to $91,080 Pay Band: 5 Agency: The Library of Virginia Locatio...
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Melinda Haunton @melindahaunton.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
One of the worst sentences :-(
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Stewart J. Brookes @stewartbrookes.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
You never *quite* know what to expect when ordering items in @bodleian.ox.ac.uk. Here’s MS. Canon. Liturg. 237
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Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
'The records have been digitised and indexed by the genealogy company Ancestry, which has partnered with the Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery at University College London.' Leaps and bounds forward in our understanding of the histories of the British enslaved. #Skystorians
theguardian.com
Nearly 4m records of enslaved people in 20 former British colonies now searchable online
Exclusive: Collection’s 300,000 pages record lives of enslaved people in countries including the Bahamas, Barbados, Jamaica, Mauritius, South Africa and Trinidad
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David Staniunas @boxreceiver.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Were, were people teaching each other to cover paper in matte acrylic medium
Hints for better spraying (of what, God knows)
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Annette Gordon-Reed @agordonreed.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Two Centuries On, Smithsonian Connects Jefferson’s Hair to Hemings’s Children www.nytimes.com/2026/09/18/a...
nytimes.com
Two Centuries On, Smithsonian Connects Jefferson’s Hair to Hemings’s Children (Gift Article)
A new book describes how cutting-edge genomics techniques yielded “extraordinary proof” that Thomas Jefferson fathered children with Sally Hemings.
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Martin Austermuhle @maustermuhle.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
I've been curious about the balancing act that professional female athletes have to deal with when they become moms, and @emmabaccellieri.bsky.social does a great job explaining how four Washington Spirit players have managed it — with help from their teammates: www.washingtonsun.com/sports/spiri...
washingtonsun.com
The Spirit’s New Moms Navigate the Season with Babies in Tow
A league policy allows players to have their babies — and their spouses — travel with the team.
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Yonette Joseph @sugarcane99.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
He was cleaning his garage. Then he found a file marked ‘SECRET. 🎁 wapo.st/4yDFDwu
wapo.st
He was cleaning his garage. Then he found a file marked ‘SECRET.’
A surprise discovery unearthed a large cache of World War II documents that had been lost to history.
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Caitlin G. DeAngelis @caitlindeangelis.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
On 9/11, hundreds of boxes of historical artifacts from New York's African Burial Ground and Five Points were in Sherrill Wilson's research lab at 6 World Trade Center. While most of the African Burial Ground artifacts were later recovered, the Five Points artifacts (~850,000) were destroyed.
nationalgeographic.com
The Archaeological Treasures That Survived 9/11
Nearly a million artifacts spanning four centuries of New York history were stored at the World Trade Center. These are the stories they told.
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Fletcher Durant @fletcherdurant.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Bruce Stringbean and the Pea Street band
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Colleen T @librarycolleen.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
“Thank God for the microfilm. Truly.” 📜 news.northeastern.edu/2026/09/04/m...
news.northeastern.edu
This old research tool can teach an iPhone some new tricks
A microfilm reader at Northeastern's library helped one student finish a century-spanning project her iPhone storage could not handle.
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Steven Van Impe @svanimpe.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Update: all issues of the Book Historical journal De Gulden Passer = The Golden Compass from 1923 up until 2015 are now available in Open Access on DBNL: www.dbnl.org/titels/tijds.... Later years will follow as the wall moves (and scanning infrastructure permits).
Cover for De Gulden Passer, Journal for Book History (2015/1).
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Fletcher Durant @fletcherdurant.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
One of the great things about returning to a childhood home is basking in the water pressure from unregulated showerheads.
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Derbyshire Record Office @derbyshiredro.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
This photograph shows why all archives are wary of silverfish, which thrive in damp conditions: most of the image has been devoured, leaving only the linked arms of this - presumably - bride and groom. #EYAErased
The remnants of a black and white photograph, stuck to a piece of card. Silverfish have devoured most of the image, leaving small patches throughout and a central larger patch showing the linked arms of a woman in a white dress and a man in a suit.
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Lawrence Vulis @lvulis.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
#climaterisk
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Phil Salvador @philsalv.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
There was a period in the 90s/00s when people would get paid $100,000 to be "futurists" and say shit like "CD-ROMs are the new town square" in Wired magazine. Current-day tech grifters must have FOMO for this era
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Uncle Mojtaba's Cavern Complex @wellburrowed.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
No one says if this 1580 text *was* actually checked out, despite being available
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Sarah Finn @romanceofbooks.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Chromolithograph from ‘Reports on Observations of the Total Eclipse of the Sun, August 7, 1869, conducted under the direction of Commodore B. F. Sands, U.S. N., Washington, 1870. #Solareclipse #naturalhistory #naturalhistoryillustration #scientificillustration #chromolithograph
The Corona of the Total Eclipse on August 7, 1869, as seen by the aid of a four inch telescope.
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N.N. Scott @nnscott.com · 13/08/2026
Fun news on the digital media archiving front. "Nine PBS" is KETC Channel 9, a PBS member TV station in St. Louis, Missouri. 50 TB of storage would be enough to hold high-res digital captures of about 2,000 half-hour television shows. Never leave the only copy of your data with someone else.
tomshardware.com
PBS broadcaster loses access to 50TB of data comprising 70 years of TV history after contracted cloud storage vendor goes defunct — public TV channel sues Iron Mountain data center, which hosts archiv...
This wouldn't have been an issue if the organization bought a $1,000 NAS and populated it with a few hard drives.
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David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
When climate adaptation runs up against “heritage”.
lemonde.fr
French state heritage architects block roof-insulation projects over height restrictions
Sarking, which involves slightly raising zinc roofs to insulate them, is authorized under Paris's bioclimatic local urban plan but often faces resistance from guardians of the city's landscape.
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Funranium (AKA Phil Broughton) @funranium.bsky.social · 08/08/2026
While I love a good posting, this is a grim one for a museum. The case is completely empty.
Posting of “Some of the artifacts in this case have been removed temporarily off-site for fire protection during the fire season. Thank you for your understanding.”
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Jenn Wong @jennwong.bsky.social · 08/08/2026
"The Morgan Library & Museum obtained $2.5m from the Lilly Endowment to digitize about 300 religious manuscripts from the Middle Ages & Renaissance. Called The Morgan Illuminated, the program should lead in 2029 to a free portal giving access to the volumes in their entirety, nearly 120,000 pages"
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The Washington Post @washingtonpost.com · 08/08/2026
Restoration work on the gilded “Arts of War” and “Arts of Peace” statues near the Lincoln Memorial is nearing completion. The restoration work, ordered by President Trump, is expected to cost more than $5 million, according to the Associated Press and other reports.
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Shannon Mattern @shannonmattern.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
The Times writes about BookOps, the logistical hub managing book distribution btw the NY and Bklyn public libraries. Its director, Sal, is retiring today, after decades of service. (I wrote about BookOps and Sal back in 2015: urbanomnibus.net/2015/06/midd...)
nytimes.com
Waiting for a Library Book? This Man Makes Sure You Get It. (Gift Article)
For 20 years, a retired Police Department captain has overseen the shipping of books to library branches. Tens of thousands of books are sorted each day.
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Lynne M. Thomas 🏳️‍🌈🚀🦄 📜 @lynnemthomas.com · 07/08/2026
And keep in mind that librarians have been yelling about this for literal decades.
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💾💜 Digital ⚓️ Vagabond 💜💾 @b33tk33p3r.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
Luke McKernan looking at three lost digital resources making a strong case for a true registry of endangered and lost digital archives (not simply a high-level symbol of endangerment) lukemckernan.com/2026/06/28/l... #digipres #DigitalPreservation #Archives #GLAM #LegalDeposit #Registry
lukemckernan.com
Lost resources
To lose one database is a misfortune; to lose four feels like a conspiracy. Recently three online databases and one audiovisual digital archive with underlying database, on each of which I worked f…
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Deva Woodly @devawo.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
This is a very serious problem for libraries, archives, and knowledge-keepers of all kinds. If you don’t control access to your collections, *you do not have collections.* If we do not have permanent access to records, stories, & sources of knowledge then our histories and memories are not our own.
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BOO! k HistoriAAAH 🎃 @book-historia.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
Would anyone like to try making some iron gall ink? If so, this book on miniature painting has a recipe for you!
“A Receipt to Make Black Ink” written on the pastedown of a book
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Dr Alison Ray @liber-ray.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
NBD, just hanging out with the Cathach, @rialibrary.bsky.social MS 12 R 33 dating to 560-600 AD and the oldest extant Irish manuscript of the Latin Psalter 🤩📜
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ian says DC statehood now @wareian.com · 04/08/2026
i think it was larry g that said big windows in a client's house are a dealer's greatest enemy. museum architects heard that as a challenge.
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ian says DC statehood now @wareian.com · 04/08/2026
very funny logic here. it's "disrespectful" to cover the huge windows the architect built for a museum full of light-sensitive objects? have we not learned from harvard and rothko, from lacma and govan, from every light-based fuck up in the past 100 years of art. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/04/a...
The museum’s first response was to lower blackout shades on the large upper windows. But when Louise Mirrer, the director of the museum (formerly the New-York Historical Society), realized how much that undermined the wing’s soaring architecture, she insisted the shades be raised back up.

“I felt it was disrespectful of the architect’s final museum project,” Mirrer said in an interview. “We had to find a means that could accommodate both the architecture and the exhibition narrative — which we did.”

So, to protect the vulnerable works, the museum replaced 17 of them with reproductions and removed another three.
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Fletcher Durant @fletcherdurant.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
Jury duty and a good book. Citizenship in action.
The cover of”Data Empire” by Roopika Risam.
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Erika Gaffney @erikagaffney.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
The Walters Art Museum seeks a new James A. Murnaghan Curator of Renaissance and Baroque Art, who will oversee a collection of over 3,000 works of European art from the Renaissance and Baroque periods. The deadline for applications is 31 August: www.codart.nl/careers/job-...
codart.nl
James A. Murnaghan Curator of Renaissance and Baroque Art - CODART
The Walters Art Museum is among America’s most distinctive museums, forging connections between people and art from cultures around the world and spanning seven millennia. Located in Baltimore’s Mount...
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Internet Archive @archive.org · 04/08/2026
Aruba’s digital heritage collection holds nearly 180,000 items for a community of just 110,000 people. 📚 In A LANGUAGE WORTH SAVING, Peter Scholing shares how Coleccion Aruba is preserving Papiamento & cultural knowledge carried through language. 🎧 futureknowledge.transistor.fm/episodes/van... 🧵
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Yaroslava @strategywoman.bsky.social · 02/08/2026
Around eight million books were destroyed in Kharkiv yesterday. Many Ukrainians are responding by buying books from the affected publishers and from KnyhoLand, the bookstore chain that also used the warehouse. I bought these today.
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Fletcher Durant @fletcherdurant.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
If the AI companies are buying books, disbinding them, scanning them, adding them to their corpora, and then disposing of the paper pages and covers, are they destroying the books? Are the books the paper that words are printed on, or are they the words themselves, which transfer to a database?
theguardian.com
‘More than just objects’: Australian booksellers raise alarm over ‘horrific’ destruction of rare titles to feed AI
Secondhand booksellers believe they may have been caught up in the AI supply chain that sees old books scanned then destroyed
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Fletcher Durant @fletcherdurant.bsky.social · 02/08/2026
The Phillies fans invaded Camden Yards. And the wife of the Phillies fan in front of us must have given out $40 to all the children around her in apology for her husband’s inability to stop cursing. My kids came home with $10. 🤷‍♂️
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Institute of Historical Research @ihr.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
10 Nov. Discover @dlocaribbean.bsky.social, the world’s largest open access repository focused on the Caribbean & known for its partner collections, historical maps and newspaper collections. With @chancyms.bsky.social & @evehayes123.bsky.social www.history.ac.uk/news-events/... @ilcs.bsky.social
history.ac.uk
An Introduction to the Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC)
CLACS & IHR Research Training
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Prisonculture @prisonculture.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
"Exclusively for UChicago on-campus housing residents, students can borrow original artworks for their dorm rooms—for free—all school year long." artsmidwest.org/stories/art-...
artsmidwest.org
Dalí in Dorms: Midwest Museum Loans Art to College Students
Art isn’t always meant for white gallery walls behind rope. Sometimes, it lives amid loft beds and term papers—if even just for a moment.
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Ned Raggett @nedraggett.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
Each section is its own adventure.
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Prisonculture @prisonculture.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
I found this fascinating. I don't think I've ever seen a Museum publicly list the costs of an exhibition before. www.artnews.com/art-in-ameri... - It's actually super helpful for people to see what it takes.
artnews.com
A Museum Dares to Reveal What It Really Costs to Make an Exhibition
“Performing Conditions: Artistic Labor and Dependency as Form,” at the MIT List Visual Arts Center, stars Autumn Knight, Dread Scott, Ghislaine Leung.
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