Joe Baubles

The front cover of the British Academy's report: A place-sensitive approach for environmental sustainability

Today, the Academy publishes a report setting out findings from our Where We Live Next programme on place-led approaches to environmental sustainability. www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/publications...

This is a huge problem for libraries. We have the problem of “bit rot,” both as the decay of the physical carriers of digital media and as the obsolescence of software & hardware to render that media for use.

And then we have DRM and the problem of ownership.

Going digital is very expensive. 📚

Anna Aslanyan | On the Picket Line On Monday morning, more than a hundred people formed a picket line outside one of the entrances to the British Library...

‘A sound archivist told me he and his colleagues could earn more in the private sector but they work here for less pay because “we believe in what we do.”’

Anna Aslanyan on the picket line at the British Library, from the blog.

www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/de...

a shot of a god botherer in a car, next to him on the passenger seat is a skull in an ornate box

'Skull of St. Thomas Aquinas being transported to Fossanova Abbey.'
Photograph by Daniel Ibanez

Culture Wars, the National Trust, and ‘Green Heritage’ in Britain The National Trust, Europe’s largest conservation charity, found themselves in the midst of a bitterly unfolding ‘culture war’ over public histories of slavery, empire and colonialism in Britain follo...

Vivid memories remain of our National Trust report, an audit of existing research on country houses' colonial histories. Here is a recent open access article about The National Trust and future possibilities for exploring colonial history by Jessica Moody.
www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi...

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York © 2016 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris

The Great Parade (definitive state) by Fernand Léger, 1954
https://botfrens.com/collections/212/contents/137817

From UNESCO to GEM, Egypt hides a dark side to grand archaeology By appointing Khaled El-Enany as head, UNESCO proves heritage has become spectacle & soft power for the institution, argues Mohamed Elshahed.

From UNESCO to GEM, Egypt hides a dark side to grand archaeology

www.newarab.com/opinion/unes...

Regardless of any architectural or traditional heritage value, this is an example of a functional building used for years, that works for people, with which they have an emotional history as well as a practical need. #PlaceHistory #LocalDemocracy #HeritageAttachment #BusShelter #BusesMatter

It's wild that there appears to be more current concern for the Lost Library of Alexandria than for the British Library. The BL's crisis exemplifies the accelerating destruction--through apathy as much as by design--of human knowledge & learning. I'm not even being dramatic.

Folks might not know a lot of people are getting *very* upset that the materials they request are not available in the libraries/archives they're requesting from.

We're getting lots here at the Library of Virginia: requests of documents likely surfaced by large language models that *do not exist*.

A view over a ploughed field towards an ancient barn topped with snow. There is a hard hoar frost tracing cobwebs and making the going hard for the corvids in the field

Ladybird Artists Advent Calendar
Window 7
‘Frost’
Artist: CF Tunnicliffe

A quick thread about empire based on a long conversation in a hospital waiting room today. Like so many Brits, my family includes people from multiple heritages, including white elders raised in industrialised regions of North England and Wales which were not racially diverse when they were young.

Sometimes when it's midnight and you're putting in the subheads you're allowed a little easter egg

On the Rise of ChatGPT and the Industrialization of the Post-Meaning World When you teach children to analyze, or appreciate, poetry, you get used to a certain complaint, that you’re making it up, that the writer did not give that much thought to choosing a colon over a c…

I'm very proud of this essay and delighted one of my fave sites is hosting it. On language as the surface of a lake and how the advertiser's dream is to sever it from an ecology of meaning, how we resist this, and why we should absolutely feel okay shaming users of AI. lithub.com/on-the-rise-...

„A sad fiasco“, my book on colonial concentration camps, has been released in paperback today. If you want to know what characterized these deadly institutions; whether colonial powers copied this technique from each other; and whether they are connected to later Nazi camps, consider taking a look.

Eventually today's boring payroll record become tomorrow's fascinating database.

Following this nice pic of 70s EMI, two images:
1) postwar Gramophone production line (from Miriam Glucksman's "Women Assemble")
2) Gramophone-themed seating in the current redeveloped site

& two sections from my book:
3) TGWU women's dispute over the Sex Pistols
4) West London gentrification

Elizabeth Taylor in an 80s press conference speaking on the stigma of AIDS “…And it so angered me that I finally thought to myself, Bitch, do something yourself.” from the documentary “Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes.”

there’s a scene in the new documentary where Elizabeth Taylor is talking about the stigma of AIDS and how she got involved in the movement and it’s fucking everything

SORRY FOR BEING A MILLENNIAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I appreciate how 90% of library+archive+museum social media production is just more and more videos about why they aren't wearing white gloves

BOYCOTT COMPLICIT INSTITUTIONS

Today is the 47th year that the world marks the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, recognising Palestinians’ inalienable right to self determination, sovereignty and independence from Israeli occupation. This year, Archaeologists Against Apartheid responded to the Palestinian civil society call to join the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement.

Responding to this call-in from our colleagues in Palestine, we hope to provoke action within the discipline, that would increase pressure on the apartheid state of Israel, help stop Israel’s genocide, stop the culturicide, stop the scholasticide, stop the apartheid. Our representative organisations unfortunately do not share our same hopes for or solidarity with the Palestinian People.

As 2025 comes to an end, we are reflecting on almost a year of organising as archaeologists of conscience, holding our representative organisations to account in the face of their negligence, silence and complicity. drive.google.com/file/d/1QPy8...

'Reflections in Black' celebrates history of Black photography with expanded issue "Where are the Black photographers?" Deborah Willis on how she turned that question into an artistic mission.

"Where are the Black photographers?" Deborah Willis on how she turned that question into an artistic mission.

Inside the Philly traveling museum where Black collectors finally take the spotlight Museums routinely curate exhibitions centering collectors’ works but this traveling art museum is a unicorn. Its "walls" are solely dedicated to the collections of Black collectors.

"Inside the Philly traveling museum where Black collectors finally take the spotlight"

"Museums routinely curate exhibitions centering collectors’ works but this traveling art museum is a unicorn. Its 'walls' are solely dedicated to the collections of Black collectors."

A large bound volume of newspapers is lying open on a table; the pages are clearly wet. A conservator has placed a dry sheet of paper on top of a wet sheet and is carefully turning both over in order to reach the next wet sheet.

A defrosted and dried page of the Long Eaton Advertiser from 21 September 1923.

When a bound volume of #1920s newspapers got wet, we froze it to prevent mould developing until we had the time and space to dry it out properly. As the wet pages felt slightly tacky we had to interleave them with dry sheets, so they wouldn’t all stick together in the freezer.
#EYAConservation

A bookcase opens to reveal a doorway in a large country house library

We love a secret doorway.

📷The secret door in the Library at Osterley, London by John Hammond

Zerrissene Stasi-Akten: Weiter puzzeln per Hand statt per IT

Why documents shredded by the Stasi in 1989 are still being put together in archives by hand, rather than by using IT. www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/ddr-... via @dpa.com

A once chained book, nowadays in the Staats- und Stadtbibliothek Augsburg. The copy: Deutsche Bibel 1604 (2* Th B VII 81).

The piercing: a metal thing made to have your book chained to a desk or shelf.

Remains of a past library: a “pierced” book of a so-called chained library. #bookhistory

Publication day! The Routledge Handbook of Heritage & Creative Practice is out today and it includes my piece on creative responses to the mass removal of love-locks along with some amazing pieces by some brilliant people www.routledge.com/The-Routledg...

poster, a radio mast emmiting radio waves. send your seasons greetings by radio to ships at sea

General Post Office poster, 1960

FINAL REVEAL: A brand new Benin bronze plaque, titled "Looting of the Oba's Palace in 1897".

This #newarrival confronts the theft of works from Benin in 1897. It shows what the palace altar looked like before 1897 (left), and British soldiers in the act of looting (right).