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Rotting Bit

@rottingbit.bsky.social
77 followers 157 following 25 posts

Librarian/Archivist interested in digital culture and preservation

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Reposted by Rotting Bit
infoDOCKET @infodocket.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
ACRL Board of Directors Approves Revised Framework for Information Literacy For Higher Education (via @ala-acrl.bsky.social) acrl.ala.org/acrlinsider/... #highered #libraries #infoliteracy
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 02/10/2026
Excellent piece by @jenniferberkshire.bsky.social on the weak Left vision for public education. This extends to higher ed; beyond free tuition and full employment, the Left doesn’t have a program of what content people are supposed to get out of college. educationwars.substack.com/p/whats-left...
educationwars.substack.com
What’s Left for Public Education?
The left has no vision for public schools - and that’s a big problem
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Neil Flanagan 🧱🗃️ @jgbollard.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Imagine if he were mayor of DC. He’d have to interview a Sweetgreen salad.
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Carol Chiodo, Ph.D. @digitaldante.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Highly recommend this piece from @mollyhardy.bsky.social which she presented at #FF26: lil.law.harvard.edu/blog/2026/09... 📚🖥️💡
lil.law.harvard.edu
Public Data, AI, and the Future of the Catalog | Library Innovation Lab
The Library Innovation Lab is growing knowledge and community by bringing library principles to technological frontiers.
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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
I participated in some public library ai courses. I’m telling you that the state of literacies and the complexity of lives deeply enmeshed in the bowels of late stage capitalism cannot find a use case for an agent & if they could, people don’t have the scaffolding to imagine one that could be useful
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Rotting Bit @rottingbit.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Are others seeing an increase in incredibly long winded reference requests? Ive gotten 4 this week that were close to 1000 words. They all explained the "why" of their request and seemed compelled to explain their credentials (why they care about the topic or other weird details)
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Quinn Daedal @quinnanya.me · 19/09/2026
Of all the ways I imagined Google Scholar going up in flames, being made inaccessible from university IP addresses due to AI-driven scraping wasn't at the top of my list.
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Charles Logan @charleswlogan.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Translation: procurement and oversight is for losers and we just want your data and your students’ data to refine our products ok?
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Shannon Mattern @shannonmattern.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
I'm glad folks keep noting the egregiously stark contrast in legal regard for GenAI companies vs Aaron Swartz
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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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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 06/09/2026
The editors seem to have cut out the part where she wrote, “My Board of Trustees, filled with tech executives, their lending banks, and their lawyers, told me to write this.” trustees.dartmouth.edu/board-member...
trustees.dartmouth.edu
Current Trustees
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David Staniunas @boxreceiver.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Our systems got ransacked by AI traffic, and so we bought shields for that, which totally foul up our UX, which makes it easier for a curious user to just ask a chatbot trained on our content to find box-and-folder sources
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infoDOCKET @infodocket.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
HathiTrust’s Response to Bot Traffic May Impact Users (via @hathitrust.bsky.social) www.hathitrust.org/press-post/h... #GenAI #AI #LLMs #bots
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Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌 @chanda.blacksky.app · 31/08/2026
i think substack has been bad for academics' brains
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Emily Higgs Kopin (spooky) @ehkopin.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
Need a study of my counterparts at other academic libraries and where we are located organizationally. Any time I want to talk to a product owner for a repository/DAMS/digipres program I am looking at a staff directory and thinking "well, if they exist they could be in any one of these departments"
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kelly jensen @heykellyjensen.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
This. Libraries are places where HUMANS with EDUCATION and EXPERTISE help you navigate information and connect you with resources. Data centers are warehouses. Libraries are not warehouses. They can be repositories, but they don't just store. They're alive. Support the fuck out of the PEOPLE.
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Anna Kornbluh @annakornbluh.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
universities are not run by leftist profs they are run by corporate profiteer board members siphoning public $$ to tech partnerships "An Inside Higher Ed analysis of SEC filings turned up dozens of presidents paid handsomely for sitting on corporate boards." www.insidehighered.com/news/governa...
the 10 presidents in Inside Higher Ed’s analysis who earned the most from outside board service in 2025.
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Connor Ewing @cmewing.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
University leadership: We stand ready to support our faculty as they confront the disruptions & uncertainty caused by AI. Faculty: Great! We'll need smaller class sizes, especially for incoming students and— University leadership: Lol, no. We meant like subscriptions to Claude.
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parker higgins @xor.blue · 17/08/2026
the fact that "rare books" often means "rare texts" is a policy outcome of our copyright law and it doesn't need to be that way
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Shannon Mattern @shannonmattern.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
“In the 1990s + 2000s, gov’ts, uni’s, + libraries—the institutions that historically bore responsibility for organizing + preserving public knwldg—declined to, or were prevented from, bldg the digital infrastructure plainly required by an age when democracy seemed ascendant + universally desirable”
bostonreview.net
What Was the Internet?
As AI overtakes the web, five writers reflect on how far it’s fallen and what comes next.
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infoDOCKET @infodocket.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
$4.9 Million of #Crossref Surplus Funds Will Be Used For "Three-Year Project to Accelerate the Redesign of Crossref System" (via @crossref.bsky.social) www.crossref.org/blog/investi... #metadata #scholcomm #publishing #infrastructure
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Rotting Bit @rottingbit.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Are LibGuides just a symptom of our lack of control over library web infrastructure, or is a "shadow CMS" actually the most effective way to let subject matter experts publish web content?
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Matthew Noe @noethematt.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
<insert really long rang here about how there's always money for the next big hype but never enough for core functions that actually keep the library running> 📚 www.chronicle.com/article/does...
chronicle.com
Does Your College Need an ‘AI Librarian’?
At a time when many institutions are grappling with the technology and its implications, some are turning to librarians for leadership.
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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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AAUP @aaup.org · 30/07/2026
The AAUP is proud to endorse Dr. Abdul El-Sayed for U.S. Senate in the Michigan Democratic primary. Dr. El-Sayed is a fierce champion for debt-free & tuition-free higher education & will be an invaluable ally for academic freedom & higher education as a public good in Washington.
ENDORSEMENT:
DR. ABDUL EL-SAYED 
2026 MICHIGAN DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY
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Mary Lewis @profmarylewis.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
It‘s quite possible that with this move, @harvard.edu could become the only Ivy League university without a writing center. www.thecrimson.com/article/2026...
thecrimson.com
Harvard College Lays Off Writing Center Director, Consolidates Center | News | The Harvard Crimson
The Harvard College Writing Center will no longer operate as a standalone unit after its director was laid off and its functions were consolidated as part of a restructuring in the Faculty of Arts and...
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Rebecca Colesworthy @rcolesworthy.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
Fewer libraries & more surveillance is a helluva sales pitch to potential students / families
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infoDOCKET @infodocket.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
Report: AI Companies are Buying Tons of Old #Books Because They're Free of #AI Slop (via @404media.co) www.404media.co/ai-companies...
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 13/07/2026
What kind of a society do we live in where the grading policies of Duke, Harvard, and Yale are the focus of the *New York Times* but the crumbling buildings of CUNY - literally the public university of the city of the paper - merits barely any attention from the NYT? ny1.com/nyc/all-boro...
ny1.com
From mold to malfunctions, CUNY conditions come under scrutiny
Several dozen staff members rallied outside Brooklyn Borough Hall on Wednesday.
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 13/07/2026
Even the so-called 'good' NYT columnists are committed to making classroom micro-politics national news while ignoring the manifold structural problems with higher ed. The @nytimes.com higher ed's coverage is a manifestation of PMC anxieties about universities, not a depiction of reality.
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infoDOCKET @infodocket.bsky.social · 05/07/2026
New Journal Article: "The System is Obviously Bonkers": The #APC Trap and the Bind of Scholarly #Publishing Across Four Research Intensive Institutions in the U.S. (via @plosone.org) journals.plos.org/plosone/arti... #scholcomm #libraries #APCs
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Jason Scott @textfiles.com · 03/07/2026
I'll summarize this: Mamdani asked NYers to keep air conditioning at 78 degrees. A wave criticism hit online. A MSNBC broadcast pointed out the US Department of Energy recommends that 78 degree figure. Immediately after, the US Department of Energy deleted 6,000 web pages related to energy saving.
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Coalition for Networked Information @cni-org.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
Call for proposals: Computational Archival Science Workshop on Dec 15 (part of the 2026 IEEE Big Data Conference). The workshop brings together professionals in big data and #AI in libraries, #archives, etc., along with researchers and across iSchools, digital humanities & computer science programs.
ai-collaboratory.net
IEEE Big Data 2026: CAS #11
11th COMPUTATIONAL ARCHIVAL SCIENCE (CAS) WORKSHOP Tue. Dec. 15, 2026 (TBD) Phoenix, AZ Part of: 2026 IEEE Big Data Conference (IEEE BigData 2026) Dec. 14-17, 2026 IMPORTANT DEADLINES (tentative &#…
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Econ Analytica @econanalytica.bsky.social · 27/06/2026
🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉 Nearly 400 local newspapers sue OpenAI, Microsoft over alleged copyright theft.
newjerseyglobe.com
Nearly 400 local newspapers sue OpenAI, Microsoft over alleged copyright theft - New Jersey Globe
The massive coalition of local newspaper publishers filed a federal lawsuit today against OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging the technology companies
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Coalition for Networked Information @cni-org.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
Deadline tomorrow! 📣 Do you run a web archiving program or use web archiving to preserve online content? The 2026 NDSA Web Archiving Survey wants to hear from you! This survey tracks the evolution of web archiving programs worldwide. 👉Take the ~15-minute survey by June 24
yalesurvey.ca1.qualtrics.com
2026 NDSA Web Archiving Survey
The NDSA releases this updated survey to learn how and why institutions and independent practitioners worldwide use web archiving to accomplish collecting goals. The Web Archiving Survey Working Group...
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Emily Higgs Kopin (spooky) @ehkopin.bsky.social · 20/06/2026
This keeps popping up and I have to chime in and say that yes, AI bots are reshaping how we are able to access websites for crawling; these changes block a lot of the Internet Archive’s attempts to automatically harvest the whole web (which I have many thoughts about), and no, Wayback =/= “history”
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Lady Froldmagen (she/her) @zinelib.bsky.social · 21/06/2026
Ever feel like history and humanities professors will fight like hell for the books but not for the people who select and describe them and build and maintain the systems that preserve them and make them discoverable?
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Internet Archive @archive.org · 19/06/2026
JUNETEENTH․com launched in 1996, sharing Juneteenth history & supporting celebrations. The #WaybackMachine preserves 30 years of its web history and how the site connected communities around a tradition now celebrated by millions. Explore the site's story 👇🏾 web.archive.org/web/19980815...
Image with text at the top that reads: "Wayback Machine Then and Now" then "Juneteenth.com". Below are Wayback Machine captures of the Juneteenth.com website from January 11, 1998, and June 5, 2026.
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Kirsten the Goblin Keeper @librarykirsten.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
I have finally finished and posted the list of alternatives to Google Scholar, along with various thoughts about ethics and librarianship and why I'm not technically a librarian any more librarykirsten.wordpress.com/2026/06/18/t...
librarykirsten.wordpress.com
The Big List of Google Scholar Alternatives (and the Big Librarian Existential Crisis)
The Crisis I started writing this in summer of last year, intending it to be a nice little list of tools that would be handy if Google Scholar disappeared or got substantially worse, as a follow up…
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Eric Rauchway @rauchway.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
see also open access
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Bobby Lee @bobbylee.bsky.social · 15/06/2026
Google search is now just a Reddit /wikipedia aggregator: “tools like Google AI search and ChatGPT use to retrieve web content with citations in response to user queries, cite user-generated content from sites like Reddit or Wikipedia in roughly half of all queries” www.404media.co/it-is-trivia...
404media.co
It Is Trivially Easy to Use Reddit to Manipulate AI Search, Research Suggests
"We show that a tiny snippet—just 13 words—of retrieved text on a UGC website like Reddit, Wikipedia, Quora, or Facebook can change AI agents to output spam / scam content pretty consistently."
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Yuliya Komska @ykomska.bsky.social · 13/06/2026
Academic hostile takeover is when you drive a discipline (in this case, literary studies) into the defund corner, then pillage whatever you want from it to suck up to tech-friendly and shallow uni admin
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Library of Congress @librarycongress.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
There's a lot of Pride history held at the Library, including this footage of some of the first NYC pride events in 1970, from the Lilli M. Vincenz Collection. The full 12 minutes of footage and other Pride resources from the Library are linked below. 🧵
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Brewster Kahle @brewster.kahle.org · 28/05/2026
The Internet Archive working with the NOAA Library to bring it much of it digital and as accessible as possible is wonderful, and a wonderful model: lets flip more libraries digital. archive.org/details/noaa blog.archive.org/2026/05/27/t...
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yung quaibo @videoteca-nod.org · 08/05/2026
sorry all our infrastructure is so bad, but i want you to know our admin had a lot of fun drinking with the vendors of this software product! <3
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Misty De Méo @cdrom.ca · 08/05/2026
Patron saint of web archiving, Jeanne d’WARC
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Miriam Posner @miriamposner.com · 08/05/2026
To be fair, we did have our own open-source (Moodle)-based LMS at UCLA for many years, which everyone also hated. As far as I can tell, the major benefit to Canvas, as the admin sees it, is outsourcing development labor; it’s not the actual software, clearly.
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Colleen T @librarycolleen.bsky.social · 04/05/2026
I think any list like this is incomplete without open stacks browsing. Like most kinds of change, there is no one "moment" to point to, though John Cotton Dana at the Denver Public Library was certainly key to the spread. americanlibrariesmagazine.org/2026/05/01/5...
americanlibrariesmagazine.org
55 Moments That Redefined Librarianship | American Libraries Magazine
To celebrate 150 years of ALA, a timeline of events that changed librarianship since the Association's 1876 founding.
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Hank Green @hankgreen.bsky.social · 01/05/2026
My first GitHub pull request conflict...everyone pray for me.
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