Finch Collins

"In the rush to ‘harness’ the power of AI, literacy has been posited as a way of engaging with it in critical, ethical and meaningful ways. This approach to literacy ties AI to economic growth and digital inclusion, but tends to overlook questions of power, agency and ideology," - Luci Pangrazio.

Chaucerians! I've agreed to a independent study on queering the Canterbury Tales with a student who requests "lots of weird secondary readings". I've got a handle on the classics, but would love recommendations for great recent queer, trans, etc scholarship on gender and sexuality in the Tales.

I'm hosted at Chetham's Library (which is the user base I'd be researching), and chats with my colleagues have been interesting! I may also reach out to staff at the university special collections. I really appreciate your suggestions!

Yes! It's tangential to my main thesis research, hence why I'm looking to situation my main research in other literature rather than fully doing the study myself. That said, your suggestions have been very helpful! It's useful to be able to say "prior research has focused on X and Y."

It would be embarrassing under any circumstances to spend a year on this reactionary horseshit, but to have spent the year in which graduate students were sent to concentration camps for op-eds and the federal govt launched a no hold barred attack on academic freedom is just beyond

I work in particular on early modern books (up to 1750) and digital library catalogues and discovery systems. None of the literature I've found yet deals with the particularities of early print and much of the technical exploration from even ten or fifteen years ago is still useful, but not current.

I have not, thank you!

I don't think a technical magic wand is needed to "solve" the "just ask the person who knows the collection" situation. Community and collaboration are essential to research. At the same time, I've been that curator, and then I, too, am stymied by the cataloguing and the discovery layer!

Yes! I expect a fair bit of the answer will be "well, the best way to find stuff is often just to ask the curator/archivist/librarian, since they'll know about relevant stuff that neither of us can find through the discovery layer."

Ah, I may have missed it because I'm not AHRC-funded but funded by the university! I'll do some poking around. It's looking like part of my project will be an informal survey of rare materials catalogue users to see what they're looking for and why.

My immigration (student visa and IHS) cost almost £5000. I make £21k a year as a PhD student. You can do the math on how much money I pay the UK government.

Reminder: today is the last day to respond to the UK government consultation to the cruel changes to immigration rules being proposed. Can take just 20 mins.

I really recommend using Amnesty's guide to the survey because the survey is designed to catch you out
media.amnesty.org.uk/documents/Am...

Time for our weekly reminder that there is only one ed tech investment that is proven to work, and it's hiring more teachers and paying them better.

That’s an interesting idea! As in, how are PhD students being taught to approach libraries? In my experience so far, they sort of… aren’t.

Thank you, Bri! FYI, you got several citations in my first midyear review writing submission ☺️

Thank you!!

I hadn’t thought to check ERIC yet, thank you!

Thank you, both! Alexandra, I may take you up on that ☺️

Yes to both, though the first is of interest (to me) as a historical artifact rather than a reflection of what academics need now. Thanks very much!

Oh, I wish I could come to your talk! Do you expect to present it in another form--blog post, eventual article, etc.--after the conference?

WHAT!!!

Has anyone studied how researchers and academics use library catalogues? I'm struggling to find any literature on researcher (not student) information needs and information seeking behavior. Any leads?

My focus is rare books/archives/special collections, but I'm looking broadly right now.

anyway the consultation shuts tomorrow, one minute to midnight UK time: www.gov.uk/government/c... Amnesty have some good guidance here. Go on: media.amnesty.org.uk/documents/Am...

Another day another press release for an AI grifter posing as news. Thanks to my friend (redacted here) for texting me this new one.

And never forget that Dame Hilary Cass belittled as "shroud wavers" those of us asking, begging, for a regime that would keep trans children alive.

We have a poster for Fluid Environments & Spatial Humanities! (credit: Giulia Grisot)

Join us in Lancaster on Feb 27 - www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/fluid-envi...

Travel bursaries available for @n8cir.bsky.social students & staff. Details via registration.

#dh #envhum #spatialhumanities #histstm

I can confirm, you sounded this intelligible and coherent! In case you didn't see, you had copious rounds of emoji applause when discussing how the language of "inevitability" is an ideological screen for exploitative tech companies that do not reinvest in knowledge production.

Sweet Taste of Empire book event poster

📣 Manchester (& nearby folks)! The brilliant @profkfh.bsky.social will be speaking about how her new book, The Sweet Taste of Empire, came to be in conversation with Dr. Fred Schurink at our next @uomenglish.bsky.social research seminar. Join us next THURSDAY, 12 Feb from 4-5 pm in Sam Alex SG.16.

Guidance for responding to 'A Fairer Pathway to Settlement' consultation We are Amnesty International UK. We are ordinary people from across the world standing up for humanity and human rights.

The UK government is proposing radical and punitive changes to settlement rules. This is settlement, not citizenship. The consultation is open until 12 February; please respond to it and oppose these evil proposals. Amnesty have a good guide: www.amnesty.org.uk/resources/gu...