iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Dr Sara Barker @sarakbarker.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Book of the Week - i was in Cultural Collections with my Special today, and this is always a fun session, trying to guess what might spark their interest. One of the hits today was Poly-Olbion, as it should be. Who doesn't love personified rivers?

Poster pinned on a grey noticeboard showing "Sara's Book of the Week" which this week is Poly-Olbion - the image shows yhe frontispiece, with a female figure surrounded by an ornate frame and other figures, and on the facing page, an explanation of the image

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The Bibliographical Society @bibsoc.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

2026 is the 550th anniversary of England's first printer, William Caxton, establishing his printing press in Westminster, London. To celebrate, the Bibliographical Society is hosting a series of videos from libraries in the UK and around the world introducing viewers to items printed by Caxton ...

youtube.com

Caxton 550 - YouTube

2026 is the 550th anniversary of England's first printer, William Caxton, establishing his printing press in Westminster, London. To celebrate, the Bibliogra...

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Dr Sara Barker @sarakbarker.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

First day of teaching was intense so forgot to post this week's book of the week (bodes well, doesn't it?) Jeremias Drexel, Aurifodina (Antwerp, Maria de Man, 1638) USTC 1004354) online copy from the Bavarian State Library. I felt something on the importance of good note-taking was appropriate.

Poster advertising this week's Book of the week, and then showing the frontispiece for Jeremias Drexel, Aurifodina (Antwerp, Maria de Man, 1638) USTC
1004354) online copy from the Bavarian State Library. A note explains that this is a work by a Jesuit preacher, on the importance of good note-taking

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Dr Sara Barker @sarakbarker.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

New year, new noticeboard arrangement! Being inspired by colleagues to include details of what i have been up to, and I've been planning "Book of the week" for a while

A grey noticeboard with several notices on it, including information about what I have been doing recently and "Sara's Book of the Week"

Poster for Sara's Book of the Week which for Induction Wek is Castiglione's Book of the Courtier. The poster shows images of the 1528 Italian edition and the 1560s English translation

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Dr Sara Barker @sarakbarker.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Ach, finding this in the office makes end of holidays a bit more bearable. I have an essay in it where I got to make terrible puns and a silly joke.

A book in a blue and yellow jacket on a desk. The book is called "Multilingual Print in Early Modern Europe"

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Dr Sara Barker @sarakbarker.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

I am very sad to hear of the passing of Bonnie Greer. Hers was a voice I always wanted to hear, because i knew I would learn and think.

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Dr Sara Barker @sarakbarker.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Forgot to take a picture of either my title slide (which was sensible) or ky conclusion slide (which involved Cardinal Richelieu as envisaged by Dogtanian) but did remember to take a quick snap at the end. Thank you to @leedstours.bsky.social for the invite and the immaculate hosting.

Selfie of me jn a green and black dress with a brooch of a woman in a big dress. I am standing next to a poster advertising the John Roles lecture, which i was giving

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Dr Sara Barker @sarakbarker.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

No 🥂 until after 2pm tomorrow!

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Dr Sara Barker @sarakbarker.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Gulp. I'd tell you all to come and hear me talk about everything from witches on Orkney to the recapture of Baghdad by the Safavids, with some truly fabulous pamphlets and images along the way but apparently the event is sold out, which is both exciting and terrifying.

The website details for a talk i am giving tomorrow at Leeds Art Gallery. The announcement has a picture of a C17 map of Europe, and the talk is called "Wars, witches, rebellions and reading: Surviving the unsettled 1620s in Europe". The website also shows thag the event is sold out.

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Dr Sara Barker @sarakbarker.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

This was such a lovely event to attend online in the depths of 2020, and what I really remember is realising how many of my online book and craft pals were attending online too

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Dr Sara Barker @sarakbarker.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Desperately trying not to make a "late to the Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre" quip...

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David M. Perry @lollardfish.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

what's funny about this is that monks were perfectly delighted with the printing press, the myth that the late medieval church resisted printing is false, you can actually embellish printed books and people did, illuminators and scribes are not the same people, and simon should read more.

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Dr Sara Barker @sarakbarker.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

I'm basically a cat - if you want to introduce me to new stuff, do it slowly and gradually. Preferably with treats.

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Dr Sara Barker @sarakbarker.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Just clicked to check something in our library catalogue, come across this new interface and immediately cried out "oh no!". I'm sure it will be grand and I will get used to it, but right now, I feel like I have lost an old friend. An old cranky friend that I knew how to cajole.

A computer monitor in front of bookshelves showing the text "Library Search" on a green background, which is a photo of the main reading room in the Brotherton library. There are various tabs for further information.

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Charlotte Lydia Riley @lottelydia.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

And now with the treatment of Arday, it’s a reminder that if the press want to destroy somebody — an academic — they can absolutely do that and they will do that. And that’s the lesson that minoritised academics who I’ve spoken to about this have taken from it all.

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Dr Dave Hitchcock @davehitchcock.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

I'm writing a thing about history education and "AI". Myself and another came up with some 'considerations' and I was wondering what people make of them in their current form. All critique appreciated, I'm trying to get to durable and defensible positions.

"Considerations for Large Language Models and the Teaching of History
1. Education is a process, not an event. And a history education is an active process through which we seek to understand our pasts and presents. We encounter history experientially through our senses and by using our memories, and we learn to do history iteratively, through the process of producing it ourselves in various formats.
2. Generative AI models cannot ‘replace’ historical thinking so much as generate a simulacrum of thought. Their use seems to offer shortcuts to a particular outcome. These shortcuts risk the acquisition of historical skills, because they subvert or replace the core processes of ‘doing history’.
3. LLMs potentially save users time by undertaking tasks like tabulating large datasets, surfacing patterns, and computing information, so long as results are carefully checked. But such tasks are to historical research like calculations are to accounting: they might support the practice but cannot inspire critical insight or reflective thought, which are the primary aims of historical scholarship.
4. Therefore, classrooms should first train history students to locate, identify, and describe sources of information and only then to learn the skills to reflect on the selection, organisation, and mining of datasets used by LLMs. "

"5. History teaching should privilege the value of quoting accurately, citing work correctly, paraphrasing sources honestly, and marshalling arguments carefully and specifically. LLM prompt responses do not yet reliably do these things, and may never do so.
6. Unless history students can assess the selection, organisation, and algorithms that power a given LLM, they should treat its outputs as sources of uncertain provenance.
7. Use of LLMs in a history classroom should always be subject to ethical and critical scrutiny, just as with any other source of information.
8. Most widely available large-language models are commercial systems, and administrator control of their parameters, tone, capabilities, acceptable answers, and programming resides with commercial firms. Their use entails significant energy expenditure and environmental degradation. These facts place significant limits on their use and on our ability to undertake the required ethical scrutiny."

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Emily Higgs Kopin (spooky) @ehkopin.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

Frustrating that talk about AI in higher ed is still attuned solely to faculty and student use in research/pedagogy, at the exclusion of staff and infrastructure where 80% of the story is happening

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Carole Cadwalladr @carolecadwalla.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

NEW: It was a digital lynching. And the media is never going to hold itself to account for the role it played in Jason Arday’s death. But there are things we can do. This is a practical guide based on my own experience. broligarchy.substack.com/p/a-digital-...

broligarchy.substack.com

A Digital Lynching

A practical guide for individuals and organisations when the mobs gather

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Dr Sara Barker @sarakbarker.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

I am hopeful that once I understand the rationale, I will appreciate the beauty of the system (parts of the BNF, Ste Gen, I feel i understand you now) but until then, I just guess at how someone came up with whatever is in front of me. Actually, the BL is also pretty wild for pamphlets.

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Dr Sara Barker @sarakbarker.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

Has anyone written about the absolute batshittery that is some library shelf mark systems? This is both a semi-serious question and a howl from the depths of my soul. Looking at you, a bunch of Swiss libraries.

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Bodleian Libraries @bodleian.ox.ac.uk · 17/08/2026

Ranking friendly-looking medieval animals by how much we'd trust them. #MedievalMonday

A medieval illustration of Taurus the Bull from an ancient manuscript. Text on the image reads: "Friendly-looking medieval animals! Ranked by how much we’d trust them."
About:
Taurus the Bull
from
Bodleian Library MS. Bodl. 614
Date Statement:
12th century, middle
Place of Origin:
England
Description:
Copies a prototype of 11th century, probably London, B.L., Cotton MS. Tiberius B. V.
Language:
Latin

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Dr Sara Barker @sarakbarker.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

Can you turn it off fully in Europe? In the UK, there are workarounds to get fewer of them, but that does rely on me remembering to use the workaround.

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Dr Sara Barker @sarakbarker.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

These always make me smile and then reflect on how badly a similar video with cats would be - 90 seconds of cats ignoring the toys and only showing interest in the packaging they came in

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Dr Sara Barker @sarakbarker.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

A morning of gently grumbling to myself as I do quick google searches of EM pamphlet titles to try mop up any random digitisations, and instead get loads of ridiculously bland and/or wrong "AI overviews".

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Corinne Fowler @corinnefowler.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

#JasonArday phoned me a few days ago to talk to someone who knows what media abuse feels like. His untimely death shows why we need part 2 of the Leveson enquiry into media conduct

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Marie Le Conte @youngvulgarian.marieleconte.com · 14/08/2026

Cambridge University should have known better, Fleet Street should have known better, the people hungrily absorbing every bit of news about it, making newsrooms feel like they had to keep going with it as a story, should have known better, horrible horrible horrible

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Alice Wickenden @awickenden.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

The draft opening sentence of my current manuscript is "people are weird about books", and although I keep meaning to go back and revise it, people keep being weird about books.

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Elise Watson @ewatson.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

#earlymodern #bookhistory Workshop Call for Papers: Women’s Professional Networks in the Early Modern Book Trade, University of Edinburgh 6-7 May 2027 Please feel free to share with anyone who might be interested!

Call for Papers
Women’s Professional Networks in the Early Modern Book Trade
University of Edinburgh
6-7 May 2027

Over the past two decades, women’s book history and feminist bibliography have exploded with renewed interest. Even so, women’s work is still to an extent seen as an exception or curiosity. It examines them from a gender history perspective, asking to what extent their relationships were influenced or determined by constructions of femininity. Proposals should therefore involve a dimension of gender analysis beyond simply the inclusion of female subjects.

This conference will seek to explore (but is not limited to) to the following themes and questions:

*Gendered Networks. To what extent were professional book trade networks gendered? How did these networks intersect with other types of women’s networks, whether they be familial, friendly, religious, political, or intellectual?
*Identity and Representation. Did women express professional solidarity with other women, and how did this manifest? How did women’s self-representation in imprints and paratext differ from men’s?
*Legal and Structural Considerations. In what ways were women’s professional networks dependent on legal structures of inheritance in their region, or participation in guilds? How did these networks stretch across economic and class divisions?
*Digital Approaches. Can digital humanities tools such as network visualisation effectively help document these relationships?

The conference will also host the launch of a new collaborative database sourcing biographical information about women in the early modern book trade.

Contributions will be published in a volume of conference proceedings, to be submitted by the end of 2027.

Proposals for papers of maximum 20 minutes, including title, an abstract of up to 300 words, and a biography of up to 150 words should be sent to Dr Elise Watson, elise.watson@ed.ac.uk, by 20 December 2026. While all papers will be delivered in person, virtual attendance will be available as well.

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Dr Susan Greaney @suegreaney.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

My uni have just withdrawn Geography, History & Geography and Politics & Geography undergrad courses run from our Penryn campus. Terrible for Cornwall. How did the staff find out? When UCAS clearing opened at 8am 😡

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Charlotte Lydia Riley @lottelydia.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Heartened to see that my university is ending its contract with Turnitin before the next academic year, because Turnitin is going to use student submissions to train AI models. Institutions can and should resist this stuff!

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National Trust @nationaltrust.org.uk · 12/08/2026

ANNOUNCEMENT: All our sundials will be out of order this evening between about 6pm and 8pm, we apologise for any inconvenience this may cause. Normal service will resume tomorrow. In unrelated news, enjoy the eclipse later... Photos: Mike Selby, Annapurna Mellor, Chris Davies, John Millar

A wall-mounted sundial inside a walled garden. Text on the sundial reads: "fear god, obey ye king"

A traditional sundial on a plinth, formal gardens surround it

The sun beams down on a traditional sundial, with heather visible in the background

A shot of a sundial from above. It's mounted on a stone plinth. Text on the side reads "KEW BRIDGE"

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Cambridge University Library @theul.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Stomping into #WorldElephantDay with this wonderful 16th-century elephant! 🐘 This elephant and castle is the device (or printer's mark) of Parisian printer François Regnault (d.1540). From Bishop Guillaume Fillâtre’s history of the Order of the Golden Fleece (1517). 📖Sel.2.65

A 16th-century black-and-white woodcut printer's mark showing an elephant with a castle-shaped structure strapped to its back. The castle holds a shield featuring the monogram "FR," and a banner below reads "FRANCOYS REGNAULT."

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Dr Sara Barker @sarakbarker.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

Exciting to get back from leave to find the latest volume in our MUP series waiting for me - Elizabeth A. Terry-Roisin's "Morisco Knights in Renaissance Spain"

The cover of the book "Morisco Knights in Renaissance Spain: The Granada Venegas family in history and memory" Elizabeth A. Terry-Roisin. The title and author details are on a black background and there is a portrait of a man in Renaissance armour below these details

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Dr Sara Barker @sarakbarker.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

Er, only one of my grandparents would have been alive 100 years ago, so does "school boy" count? Otherwise, going further back, it's miners, butchers and below stairs. And a fair bit of scandal on both sides, as i understand it.

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Dr Sara Barker @sarakbarker.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

Just a whole load of wazzocks who reckon they know the cost of everything and evidently they know the value of sweet FA

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Dr Sara Barker @sarakbarker.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

Look, AI companies, i just got my chapter about digitisation and research & teaching planned, it's super inconvenient for you to be discovered chatting about "our effort to destructive scan all the books in the world". Also, what the actual? I try not to be too doom laden but you make it so hard.

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Dr Sara Barker @sarakbarker.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

I also had a question about how narrators get matched to documentaries, because i watched "The Nazis: A Warning from History" last week, which I would still love to know more about, but the answer to this one was really interesting!

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Dr Sara Barker @sarakbarker.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

Very excited to get my question read out on The Rest is Entertainment (even if Richard and Marina slightly mangled my name) and even more delighted that the answer involved mention of cinema vérité!

Screenshot of Spotify transcription for an episode of The Rest is Entertainment, which says "Sarah Baker has a question for you, Marina"

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Marie Le Conte @youngvulgarian.marieleconte.com · 27/07/2026

I say this with nothing but love in my heart for the fatherland but can you imagine any other country looking at wildfires and thinking "quick, get a philosopher on the line"

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Dr Sara Barker @sarakbarker.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

Immediately triggered into flashbacks of French archives departmentales on industrial estates...

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Dr Laura Sangha @lsangha.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

Things are so bad I joined WhatsApp (still don't have a smartphone though, no). In amongst the serious stuff in our 'at risk' chat are some Very Lovely Things. For instance, my colleague who works on the Italian Renaissance shared this photo of the Archivio di Stato di Roma, where she currently is:

A photo taken through an archway at the State Archives of Italy. All around are magnificent old buildings with a clear blue sky above.

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Dr Laura Sangha @lsangha.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

Professor Whittle is one of four colleagues in the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences Faculty at the University of Exeter elected to Fellowship of the British Academy this year. 🗃️ ALL FOUR of these outstanding scholars were placed at risk of redundancy last month. Here's their statement:

A written statement from from University of Exeter scholars just elected to the British Academy Fellowship 2026. There are photos of each scholar at the side of the text.

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Dr Laura Sangha @lsangha.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

🥳 Enormous congratulations to my outstanding colleague & friend Prof. Jane Whittle, on her election to the Fellowship of the British Academy. Jane is a world renowned scholar of the history of work & gender in preindustrial Europe. She currently leads The Material Culture of Wills project. 🗃️

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Dr Sara Barker @sarakbarker.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

If I read one more thing about how Erling Haarland bought an manuscript... No, it was an early printed book, PRINTED, printed in 1594 as per the BBC, manuscript is handwritten, although obvs print and manuscript co-exist as important forms for a long time... yup, I need a good lie down, don't I?

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Dr Sara Barker @sarakbarker.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

Enjoying the IMDB cast list for "The American Experiment" on Netflix. That's quite some archive footage there...

Screenshot of IMDB cast list, which includes John Adams, Martha Washington, Thomas Paine, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Abigail Adams from "archive footage"

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Dr Sara Barker @sarakbarker.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

Going to see 1536 with friends I've had for three decades was the right call...

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Mickaël Wilmart @mickaelwilmart.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

Carlo Ginzburg est mort, annonce la presse italienne. Immense historien, il a su construire une oeuvre originale entre micro-histoire et anthropologie historique qui a considérablement renouvelé la discipline. www.repubblica.it/cultura/2026...

repubblica.it

Carlo Ginzburg è morto, addio al grande storico italiano

Aveva 87 anni. Era famoso in tutto il mondo per le sue ricerche sulla stregoneria e le credenze popolari

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