iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Ned Potter @nedpotter.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Well let me know if you want a proper quote via email - I’ve worked with QUB before and it was great!

Ned Potter @nedpotter.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

... people face-to-face as possible; prioritising social media and - crucially - trying to package the whole thing up in such a way that returning students can really benefit from it too, without feeling silly for not knowing stuff!

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Ned Potter @nedpotter.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

I wrote about the art of empathetic library induction... www.ned-potter.com/blog/the-art... Guiding principles for putting the students first in the orientation process. Namely, not trying to tell them everything at once; using week-by-week themes to chunk information; speaking to as many...

ned-potter.com

The art of empathetic library induction... — Ned Potter

For as long as I can remember I’ve been in charge of my library’s Induction / Orientation process for new students, and it has evolved over the years into a fairly well oiled machine. We treat the who...

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Ned Potter @nedpotter.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Hi Nick, I do, yes - I actually do academic versions of the social media workshop (for researchers, or departments / schools, or both) but no one from Unis really knows I offer it! 😄I'd love to do it more often.

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Ned Potter @nedpotter.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Then on November 4th, a focused session on marketing with video - TikTok, YouTube, Insta Reels, the possibilities and perils of virality, the differences between the channels, and a lot more. Both of these are on Zoom, from 10am - 1pm with some breaks to get away from the screen!

my.cilip.org.uk

UKeiG CPD - YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and beyond: video marketing for libraries and cultural organisations

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Ned Potter @nedpotter.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

We really get into what we're trying to get out of social media as orgs, and what we want to say, and how we want to say it. There's a lot of very practical stuff in there too, especially around Instagram as that's the platform most universally used across libraries these days.

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Ned Potter @nedpotter.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Two sessions coming up for @ukeig.bsky.social on various aspects of social media for organisations. These are absolutely full of back-and-forth in the chat and often feel like a huge group learning session (and sometimes a huge group therapy session...). First up is Purposeful Social Media, Oct 29:

my.cilip.org.uk

UKeiG: Purposeful Social Media for Libraries & Archives

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Ned Potter @nedpotter.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

We caught it 5 months in because of this, and she still has both her eyes, albeit with around 90% vision loss in one of them and 10% loss in the other... Because it's so rare it can go undiagnosed for a while, so be vigilant. G is doing great now, she's a total legend. Okay PSA over!

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Ned Potter @nedpotter.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Hey apparently it's World Sight Day. If you've got a young baby, do look out for how their eyes respond to flash photography. If they have red-eye in only one eye (or neither eye) when photographed with a flash, that can be a symptom of Retinoblastoma, a rare eye cancer my daughter had.

nhs.uk

Symptoms of retinoblastoma

Find out about the symptoms of retinoblastoma. The main sign is a white glow or reflection in the centre of the eye.

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Ned Potter @nedpotter.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

FWIW I only have one ‘if you loved x you may also love y’ recommendation and it’s for that, and Chabon’s Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay…

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Ned Potter @nedpotter.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

In the time between my Dad writing the dedication and his book being published, Emily has moved up two places in the height order…

Christmas Carols: an English Enchantment by John Potter

To (in current height order): Ned, Alice’s Emily, Penny and Grace with thanks for magnificent christmases

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Ned Potter @nedpotter.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

(For context) bsky.app/profile/theg...

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Ned Potter @nedpotter.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Imagine five-years-ago-you hearing that *this* company, the company that did this stuff below, is the one the Bodleian have **partnered with** in order to let it train its model on their materials. You’d think it like something from dystopian sci-fi (and it basically is).

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Ned Potter @nedpotter.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Absolutely love all of this!

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Ned Potter @nedpotter.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Not at all, it is in fact Best Practice

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Ned Potter @nedpotter.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

My modest dream is for my two worlds to collide & for my 90s dance music band to play at a library event… So far two library conferences & a forthcoming wedding between two massive LEGENDS on here have been ruled out due to band unavailability, but one day it’ll happen and it’ll be epic. 🔊

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Ned Potter @nedpotter.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Really pleased with this book wallpaper (with all book titles chosen by our students and staff!) in our newly refurbed entrance area - which is otherwise bookless… 📚

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Ned Potter @nedpotter.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

If you want to follow a bunch of academic libraries in one go, step this way! 📚 (Also Public and Health library equivalents, both found via my profile)

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Ned Potter @nedpotter.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

Student Curators is one of the really good things my library does year on year... 📚

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Ned Potter @nedpotter.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

Me too! My proposal has been neither accepted nor rejected which makes me think maybe it didn't submit properly 😭

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Ned Potter @nedpotter.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

I find if you list a load of issues with GenAI, pro-AI people cherry pick a couple they feel they can rebuff, then move on like they won the argument and so GenAI is fine. But surely even the people who don't care about the all the other stuff care about losing cognitive function? Right?

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Ned Potter @nedpotter.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

A 2025 MIT Study (summarised below) used EEGs to record brain activity in controlled groups. The GenAI-using group has the lowest brain engagement and “consistently under-performed at neural, linguistic and behavirol levels.” The study lasted months and the GenAI users got worse and worse over time.

time.com

ChatGPT's Impact On Our Brains According to an MIT Study

The study, from MIT Lab scholars, measured the brain activity of subjects writing SAT essays with and without ChatGPT.

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Ned Potter @nedpotter.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

Using GenAI *reduces cognitive function*. The actual function of your brain. It reduces it. So when you use GenAI regularly for a task, you lose the ability to do the task without GenAI (just like if you used a machine to do your exercise for you, you would lose fitness and muscle).

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Reposted by Ned Potter

University of York Library @uoylibrary.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

Great to see so many pearls of wisdom on here for people getting their A-level results today... We just hope they reach all three of the Bluesky users young enough to be doing A-levels.

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Ned Potter @nedpotter.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

It's the heaviness of the issue itself and the permanent 'elastic band at tension' feeling caused by not knowing where to put your energy, as you say...

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Ned Potter @nedpotter.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

Thanks to @drbeth.bsky.social for posting it into my timeline - I agree that we need to think about this from a library perspective, GenAI recommender tools and so on.

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Ned Potter @nedpotter.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

This is well worth reading. I liked: a) "A recommender that’s a mediocre predictor of what you’d love in a rich, diverse world becomes an excellent predictor of what you’ll click in the impoverished one it creates" And b) that it wasn't called 'Whither serendipity?' which it easily could've been.

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Ned Potter @nedpotter.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Omg. I feel this in my *soul*

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Ned Potter @nedpotter.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

Our Customer Services team are at an all-day training event so us non-CS managers are each covering an hour on library reception today... Can confirm I've not felt this out of my depth since doing my 10m swimming badge at Junior school. 😱 However, halfway through shift: building still standing. 🎉

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Ned Potter @nedpotter.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

UK time, still 40 mins to go 😄

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Ned Potter @nedpotter.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

I have had several huuuuge, disparate projects on, all of which need to be done by 5pm today cos of the financial year end - and my goodness, Bluesky, my shoulders will be lighter at approx 5:01pm! I am PLOUGHING through these projects like a fricking PLOUGH. In your FACE, metaphorical top-soil

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Ned Potter @nedpotter.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

I got a new phone so I need a new phone case so I looked for one and I’ve bought it and that’s it, I’m done now. Instagram feed is still all (this isn’t satire this a real ad) ‘we know men don’t like boring cases so we made a case for men’ - please, and I can’t stress this enough, get fuuucked.

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Ned Potter @nedpotter.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

There needs to be a button you can press on insta that says ‘I’ve now bought the item you somehow creepily know I’ve been looking for so you can tell your advertisers to stop wasting their time making 90% of my feed that item’

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Ned Potter @nedpotter.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

Big job available if anyone's up for it: jobs.york.ac.uk/vacancy/dire...

jobs.york.ac.uk

Jobs - The University of York

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Ned Potter @nedpotter.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

I agree with this fully, but also LinkedIn is who you follow. Not a single one of you lot have, as far as I've seen, compared your recent project management journey with The Odyssey... The key thing to keeping LinkedIn tolerable is to disconnect with anyone who does all the awful LinkedIn tropes.

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Ned Potter @nedpotter.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

I went to a festival this weekend and let my 12 year old niece glitter and colour my beard and NEVER have I had so many compliments from strangers! 😄 (At one point I danced onto someone’s foot and turned around to apologise and all their anger vanished when they saw the beard…)

Me a 46 year old man in a hoodie with a glittery yellow/gold and green beard, posing with a 15 year old daughter and 13 year old daughter

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Ned Potter @nedpotter.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

This = good, at least they're getting rid!

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Ned Potter @nedpotter.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

It is deeply unfortunate. Can't legislate for reputations of people you quote changing since you left X (assuming they have - there's no pinned post saying so), but you can at least take out the link when you redo the website...

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Ned Potter @nedpotter.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

As a side note @cilip.bsky.social, not sure if still linking to X from the footer of the site is worthwhile - particularly with this first post highlighted about 'good guys' aging not very well.

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Ned Potter @nedpotter.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

Katie I literally lolled at the SASS of this post 😄

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Ned Potter @nedpotter.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

Trying not to get wound up by this use of GenAI on CILIP's website... (Were I overthinking it, I'd think it says: are librarians principled enough to take a stance against GenAI? No. But are they competent enough to use it well? Also no. Ah, but can they proof-read websites? Still no.)

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Ned Potter @nedpotter.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

I was really pleased to work with @openingthefuture.bsky.social again recently. We did a session about the idea of trying to 'market' open access better - I see a lot of comms, and a lot of advocacy, but not the marketing part that sits somewhere between them... #OA

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Ned Potter @nedpotter.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

It may have been unprecedented but it would surely surprise no one if it became a precedent...

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Ned Potter @nedpotter.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

My university has done what now?

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