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Reposted by Fletcher Durant

Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 2d

The book is not dead. (But it may no longer be on the right library shelf).

The Pushkin job: unmasking the thieves behind an international rare books heist

The long read: Between 2022 and 2023, as many as 170 rare and valuable editions of Russian classics were stolen from libraries across Europe. Were the thieves merely low-level opportunists, or were bi...

www.theguardian.com

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Reposted by Fletcher Durant

Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 2d

I have been trying to explain a microfiche machine to one of my dear, brilliant, talented, but clearly too young to be alive collaborators. And it is taking the last of my soul.

“Micro…fish?? I have never heard that word in my life.” I recorded the timestamp so it can be put on my tombstone.

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Jane Winters @jfwinters.bsky.social · 8d

Join us on 20 November for the Annual Digital Lecture, a partnership between The National Archives, UK and the School of Advanced Study. The wonderful @nannathylstrup.bsky.social will be speaking about ‘When saving becomes loss: archival memory in the digital age’. Free to register!

When saving becomes loss: Archival memory in the digital age

Explore archival memory, data loss, and attempts to preserve the past in the digital age at this year’s Annual Digital Lecture.

www.eventbrite.co.uk

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If you know you know @privatechand.bsky.social · 9d

This would be why I am such a strident critic of digitization as a substitute for actual archival preservation. My sixteenth century documents are far sturdier and likely to survive another 500 years than the detritus on the internet. And digitization is not democratization.

Dan Gillmor @dangillmor.bsky.social · 10d

Google deletes history:

Google just erased 7 years of our political history

Google appears to have deleted its political ad archive for the EU; so the last 7 years of ads, of political spending, of messaging, of targeting - on YouTube, on Search and for display ads - for countless elections across 27 countries - is all gone. We had been told

www.thebriefing.ie

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Reposted by Fletcher Durant

🦇 Ashley 🦇 @redhairedash.bsky.social · 9d

Meet the Scientist Digitizing Millions of Fossilized Pollen Grains to Reveal Earth’s Climate History
#archives #pollen
www.smithsonianmag.com/blogs/nation...

Meet the Scientist Digitizing Millions of Fossilized Pollen Grains to Reveal Earth’s Climate History

Smithsonian researcher Ingrid Romero studies fossil pollen to reconstruct ancient climates and predict future changes

www.smithsonianmag.com

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Fletcher Durant @fletcherdurant.bsky.social · 11d

My hope is that there will be a deinstall party in which the crews indulge in mass consumption.

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Fletcher Durant @fletcherdurant.bsky.social · 11d

Just contemplating the butter cow on display at the Renwick Gallery. Has the Smithsonian committed to preserving hundreds of pounds of butter or just the documentation?

Cow made of butter at the Renwick Gallery’s State Fairs exhibit, September 2025. The cow is in an octagonal case that is clearly climate controlled. The HVAC unit likely resides above the case. Out of frame is a Dale Chihuly chandelier that hangs high above it all, adding a contrasting style to the notion of craft in 21st century America.

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Fletcher Durant @fletcherdurant.bsky.social · 12d

A love of Marinetti and bombass manifesto.

www.societyforasianart.org/sites/defaul...

www.societyforasianart.org

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Reposted by Fletcher Durant

Alex Brown 🇵🇸 (they/them) @bookjockeyalex.bsky.social · 12d

In case you're wondering why AI is pushing so hard into education, that last bullet point is why. Get consumers hooked in young and they're likely to stay. And get embedded enough into classrooms and curriculum and the education system can't function without it - ie permanent consumers.

Christopher Mims @mims.bsky.social · 12d

*The AI boom = one of the costliest building sprees in world history

* Past 3 years' commitments are greater than the cost of building the U.S. interstate highway system

* Consumers must spend $800 billion on AI within a few years, to justify investment from 2023-24

www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-b...

This week, consultants at Bain & Co. estimated the wave of AI infrastructure spending will require $2 trillion in annual AI revenue by 2030. By comparison, that is more than the combined 2024 revenue of Amazon, Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta and Nvidia, and more than five times the size of the entire global subscription software market.

Morgan Stanley estimates that last year there was around $45 billion of revenue for AI products. The sector makes money from a combination of subscription fees for chatbots such as ChatGPT and money paid to use these companies’ data centers.

How the tech sector will cover the gap is “the trillion dollar question,” said Mark Moerdler, an analyst at Bernstein.

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🜲 James @jamesskeets.blacksky.app · 12d

Through her creative platform, Saint Heron, Solange has launched The Saint Heron Library, a digital archive dedicated to making rare and out-of-print works by Black authors, poets, and artists accessible to all.

🔗 library.saintheron.com

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Colleen @librarycolleen.bsky.social · 16d

The University of the Arts’ archive will now live on at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania 📜
www.inquirer.com/arts/univers...

The University of the Arts’ archive will now live on at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania

The collection, which might hold almost a million items, could've ended in a dumpster. But now, it will be HSP's largest and will cost an estimated $500,000 to catalog, conserve, and digitize.

www.inquirer.com

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Colleen @librarycolleen.bsky.social · 17d

Snakeskin Bookmarks (Yes, Really) 📜
#LibraryofCongress #Conservation
blogs.loc.gov/loc/2025/09/...

Snakeskin Bookmarks (Yes, Really) | Timeless

Linnea Vegh was working at a large, well-lit workspace in the Conservation Division on a recent day, considering an unusual problem in an 1869 Persian-Arabic dictionary published in India: Snakeskin. ...

blogs.loc.gov

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Fletcher Durant @fletcherdurant.bsky.social · 17d

Maybe!

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Fletcher Durant @fletcherdurant.bsky.social · 17d

The rise of arsenic colorants.

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Reposted by Fletcher Durant

tatzanx @tatzanx.bsky.social · 20d

Making a Zine: Keeping D.C. Music and Its Meaning in Print - Washington City Paper washingtoncitypaper.com/article/7709...

Making a Zine: Keeping D.C. Music and Its Meaning in Print

In the hardcore punk scene and beyond, local zine makers build community and support movements through self-publication.

washingtoncitypaper.com

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Reposted by Fletcher Durant

The Continent @thecontinent.org · 18d

The Nigeria leather industry is estimated to generate at least $600-million a year, but most of it goes to people in the middle. The shoes, bags, and belts assembled from this leather will bear labels like “Made in Italy” but give no credit to the Nigerian workers who did the dirty first steps.

Hide and seek

Meet the Nigerians who make your genuine ‘Italian’ leather.

continent.substack.com

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Reposted by Fletcher Durant

Colleen @librarycolleen.bsky.social · 21d

Harvard’s Austerity Measures Put Library Renovations on Hold 📜
www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

Harvard’s Austerity Measures Put Library Renovations on Hold | News | The Harvard Crimson

Harvard has paused plans to renovate four University libraries ahead of its 400th anniversary in 2036 as part of a temporary halt to capital projects amid an ongoing fight with the White House over fe...

www.thecrimson.com

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Reposted by Fletcher Durant

pam lach @plach.bsky.social · 20d

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a campus in need of money for deferred maintenance will always have water leaks in its library

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Reposted by Fletcher Durant

404 Media @404media.co · 20d

Reference librarian Eddie Kristan said lenders at the library where he works have been asking him to find books that don’t exist without realizing they were hallucinated by AI.

🔗 www.404media.co/librarians-a...

Librarians Are Being Asked to Find AI-Hallucinated Books

It’s a trippy time to have a library card.

www.404media.co

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Fletcher Durant @fletcherdurant.bsky.social · 20d

Good news! Body lice are not a threat to library collections #IPM

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Fletcher Durant @fletcherdurant.bsky.social · 20d

So days I miss that academic library life.

www.reddit.com/r/UMD/s/VMfF...

From the UMD community on Reddit: LICE INFESTATION 4TH FLOOR MCKELDIN

Explore this post and more from the UMD community

www.reddit.com

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Reposted by Fletcher Durant

Michael Socolow @michaelsocolow.bsky.social · 24d

AI data scraping is causing major problems for digital archives.

Many publishers of cool historical material (free for the public), like @hagleycenter.bsky.social, are being hit w/ bot swarms akin to denial of service attacks.

Latest in The Lint Trap

linttrapofhistory.substack.com/p/when-ai-da...

Over an image of the Hagley Library's website, the following text is written: "When AI Data Scraping Causes Problems for Digitized Archives. This summer one of my favorite archival websites was hit by so much AI bot traffic it amounted to a denial of service. Which is bad, because the Hagley Digital Archives are awesome."

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Colin Dickey @colindickey.com · 24d

TIL: In 1882, Kodak went nearly bankrupt because of poor quality film stock, until they discovered that cows eating mustard seed produced better gelatin, necessary for film stock.

“If cows didn’t like mustard seed, there wouldn’t be any movies at all.”
-Head of research C E Kenneth Mees