Margy MacMillan

In the depths of quarantine ‘everyone was furloughed [+] home cleaning out their attics… All of a sudden, you find Great-aunt Ruth’s typewriter.‘… Philly is just so eclectic + weird that it’s the exact city that would be able to support the world’s largest typewriter company.”

They asked me about spark notes. I proceed to go off on learning theory and cognition.

Universitye administrators, hearken unto me, and let me telle you all: *Severance* ys a cautionarye tale, not a goal for your studentes.

#ECIL2025 programme available The programme for the 2025 European Conference on Information Literacy (ECIL) is available, taking place 22-25 September 2025 in Bamberg, Germany. I (Sheila) will be - chairing and presenting on a panel, Developing an international research agenda for Information Literacy, with Professor John Budd, Bill Johnston, Dr Karen Kaufmann, and Professor Clarence Maybee. - presenting a paper, AI + Age-Friendly Media and Information Literacy: Gerontechnology, with Bill Johnston - and am honoured to be invited to give feedback in the doctoral forum Other University of Sheffield Information School presentations are: - The opening keynote from Dr Andrew Cox: The Dimensions of AI Literacy - Co-producing research priorities for Health Literacy with marginalised communities: Dr Pamela McKinney, Dr Laura Sbaffi, Dr Andrew Cox, Professor Peter Bath - Female engineering students’ information experiences: Preliminary findings from a PhD study: Laura Woods The programme is here: https://www.conftool.org/ecil2025/index.php?page=browseSessions Information about registrationis here: https://ecil2025.ilconf.org/registration/

#infolit

Cartoon: on the left Elvis Presley in his Jallhouse Rock outfit. On the right Elvis in the same pose but wearing hi-vis jacket. Caption on left: Elvis Presley. Caption on right: Hi-vis Presley

You may wonder why I’m selling this cartoon. Well, it’s one, for the money…

www.worldofmoose.com/products/hi-...

LGBTQ2S+ Books Give Kids a ‘Feeling of Being Seen’ | The Tyee Amidst backlash and bias, BC’s human rights commissioner hosted a talk celebrating gender diversity.

“It’s that shock of recognition, where you can see yourself reflected back in someone’s eyes with love.”

While I find the autocomplete analogy to be a useful starting place when explaining how LLM‘s work, this detailed thread digs into more fundamental critique of the technology.

Working on the King David mouse armour project. I decided to start with the body. #jeffdeboer #mousearmour #kingdavid #miniaturesculpture #jewellery #davidandgoliath #metalarts #miniatureart

How Small-Town Public Libraries Enrich the Generative Research Process Like many authors, I love doing background research. Also, like many authors, I do some of my research online. Setting a chapter in San Luis Obispo, but never been? Drop your little gingerbread dud…

“One reason that small-town library rsrch works so well is bc of its natural parameters. Rather than an ocean of information to click through, you get a small stack of 📚. A small stack of 📚 is manageable. It’s focusing. In our era of seemingly limitless data, I for one thrive on these boundaries.”

Indigenous languages summit focuses on revitalization An Indigenous languages summit taking place in Ottawa features language experts from around the world and is focusing on revitalization.

The first full day of the Global Indigenous Languages Summit in Ottawa wrapped up Tuesday afternoon.

The theme was land and language, which featured a social media and youth component, as well as breakout sessions on Indigenous language revitalization.

YouTube video by APTN News How this Cree writer and producer got her own full-length film premiere | APTN News

Plains Cree writer and producer, Hayley Morin, is about to debut her full-length film premiere of ‘Under The Arbour,’ a journey through the heart of the pow wow trail.

Four First Nations within the Niiwin Wendaanimok or Four Winds partnership signed a memorandum of understanding with the province of Manitoba, which will see the integration of Anishinaabe laws into the twinning of the Trans-Canada Highway.

The NMWA Honors 50 Years of the Women's Studio Workshop – PRINT Magazine Curator Maymanah Farhat, reflects on the exhibition, 'A Radical Alteration: Women’s Studio Workshop as a Sustainable Model for Art Making.'

“The show aims to outline how the co-founders of [Women’s Studio Wrkshp] were able to develop an organization that cld last the ever-changing political, social, + cultural landscapes of the US… My hope with curating this exhibition was that I would be able to provide a template for sustainability…”

Oh no…. That’s so hard

Such a massive backward step

Crossing fingers, toes, etc for you!

Hooray!

To Fight Misinformation, We Need to Teach That Science Is Dynamic Science is a social process, and teaching students how researchers work in tandem to develop facts will make them less likely to be duped by falsehoods

8. This has been a short and honestly rather peevish thread, so if you want read more that has been written in a more equanimous tone, here's a short piece that I coauthored a few years ago, precisely about how we deal with this kind of duplicity.

This wildfire expanded from a 50 to 630 in a few hours. It's going to be massive in the morning.

I’ve found @drhelenkara.bsky.social’s work tremendously useful in my own research, as teaching resources, and in supporting colleagues. Clear, practical, creative guidance on everything from generating ideas and approaches to disseminating results.

Qualitative research videos Dr Helen Kara has a very useful Youtube stream with short, clearly-expressed videos about various aspects of qualitative research methods ("Research principles, methods and ethics") e.g. What Is Grounded Theory (in under 2 minutes!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Rybz_AjXc8 and Why Informed Consent is a Myth https://youtu.be/dEKBDyMhrHA?feature=shared. There are also some videos from the International Creative Research Methods Conference. The stream is here https://www.youtube.com/@HelenKaraWriter Photo by Sheila Webber: pink roses, July 2025

#infolit

Education and the New Cult of Efficiency Raymond Callahan's 1962 book Education and the Cult of Efficiency remains a classic study of public education in the US, chronicling how in the early twentieth century schools' goals became business g...

Our society has prioritized productivity and efficiency over learning for a century now, so when Altman et al say AI is a "PhD in your pocket," they don't mean "smarter" as much as "cheaper" and "faster" 2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/education-an...

Beyond cartoon Original cartoon by Moose Allain from world of moose

www.worldofmoose.com/collections/...

Neither Rhyme Nor Reason To make poems rhyme can sometimes be tough as words can seem to be from the same bough, yet each line’s ending sounds different, though, best covered up with a hiccough or cough.   Was this upsetting to Byron or Yeats? Dickinson, Wordsworth, Larkin or Keats? Did they see these words as auditory threats? Could they write their lines without caveats?   What does it matter when all’s said and done if you read this as scone when I meant scone? It’s hardly a crime. There’s no need to atone: language is a bowl of thick minestrone.   So mumble these endings into your beard – this poem should be seen, rather than heard. Brian Bilston

Here’s a poem called ‘Neither Rhyme nor Reason’.

Artist Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun Lets’lo:tseltun stands in front of his “The Impending Fire Storms” (2024) at the Vancouver Art Gallery.

'Last week Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun Lets’lo:tseltun stopped by the Gallery to see his work “The Impending Fire Storms” (2024), now on view for the first time in the final installation of our pop-up exhibition.' - at Vancouver Art Gallery
www.vanartgallery.bc.ca/exhibitions/...

Can nonprofit news mix with local TV? A Pennsylvania partnership aims to find out “This is a nut that no one else in the country has cracked — how to translate what nonprofit newsrooms are doing for commercial TV.”

“The reality is that people of color in the U.S. are more likely to turn to TV news for local information then they are newspapers or digital… For the benefit of local audiences, local news nerds need to team up with local TV… Spotlight PA and Nexstar have been working on a pilot to do just that.”

Keeping Kids Safe During Summer Heat | The Tyee Doctors have recommendations around windows and water. One policy analyst points out that maximum allowable indoor temps are key.

As Metro Vancouver braces for a heat wave, catch up on @michellegamage.bsky.social’s July 2024 report on keeping kids cool and safe.

“It’s warm enough for folks to open windows, but it only takes one window that opens 10 centimetres or a distraction to put a kid at risk,” warned one expert.

AI-critical ALA folks with the bandwidth to take this on, take heed! www.ala.org/aboutala/com...

The Alberta Indigenous Games has been running from August 7th until August 16th in Edmonton.

More than 7000 Indigenous athletes have gathered in Edmonton, competing in 18 different sports.

Today's competitions included track and field, beach volleyball and much more.

YouTube video by APTN News Mi'kmaw youth connecting to culture through pageantry | APTN News

A pageant focusing on Mi’kmaw youth, culture and traditions was held last Thursday evening.

And for the first time, a young man was also one of the contestants.

That, and more storylines from this pageant in We’kopetik Mi'kmaw Nation.