Devin Fitzgerald, bibliothot

I have gotten permission to clarify: no books from special collections were stolen. These were books that were still in circulation (but 17th century wood block editions).
No manuscripts, all print obviously.

Not a single title was in special collections. The scandal is elsewhere @latimes.com

If these are your journalistic
standards, call a fucking librarian instead of having everyone blow up my email

The job I got would have been powered by opium endowments, so fairly stable....

I have just been told our official policy is no comment based on legal advice. So I will hush

UC says Trump demand for $1-billion fine would 'completely devastate' university system The Trump administration has proposed the University of California pay more than $1 billion to settle antisemitism charges and restore frozen grant funding at UCLA.

Good thing I turned down a Smithsonian job for something that seemed more stable. Quite the news day here at UCLA....
www.latimes.com/california/s...

Man arrested for allegedly stealing rare Chinese manuscripts from UCLA libraries - Daily Bruin A man was arrested Tuesday after allegedly using false identities to steal over $200,000 worth of rare Chinese manuscripts from the UCLA Library system. Jeffrey Ying, a resident of Fremont, California...

I promise you, your local library has Chinese rare books cataloged as part of circulating collections. This guy, who has been an issue at the UCs, is likely one of a national scale scheme.

dailybruin.com/2025/08/08/m...

These guys

Devin standing in front of a table laid with three open manuscripts.

@devinfitz.bsky.social regaling my class’s students with Armenian and Byzantine manuscripts.

I was like, wondering why you looked so familiar 😂

Was summoned to watch @aarontpratt.bsky.social melt brains in Descriptive bibliography @calrbs.bsky.social
Here he's doing one of the first exercises I came up with here: give everyone an Aldine and have them read the catalog and compare

I do not believe anyone from bluesky has ever come to a reading, but nevertheless, I will promote.

The brilliant @sonjadrimmer.bsky.social kicking off her @calrbs.bsky.social course. Hands on medieval ms in every session. We paged about 100 for her.

Californian whites are a class of their own.

People out there being their ancestors' wildest dream, and I'm locking down being their nightmare.
Taking my inspo from Renaissance woodcuts for my look book.

Only one person hired before 2016 in that dept managed to get tenure

Wild that Caltech humanities has failed to retain or tenure a single junior faculty member since my ex started there in 2016.

Roughly 200 books already paged for my first three days of @calrbs.bsky.social
Fortune favors the bold?

An early Chinese woodcut, from 984 and Saint Christopher from around 1423, two plates in Susan Huang's exciting new book on Buddhist print culture.

Needham on nailheads - July 29 in Princeton (and on Zoom)

Nutty. I was pretty sympathetic to all the evidence Farley found, but this is just so ace.

I see I was added to a new queer list and gained followers. So here is a video about typography that I have been told is also a thirst trap

Clearly the polycule needs a booking agent. We would then be legible.

Dating in LA is funny, because people have no idea that 9-5 jobs are actually normal. They are always deeply shocked that I'm not just like, around at random 2-3pm moments.
I have had to sit people down and explain "Monday-Friday every week...yes every week
...no it doesn't change."

Everyone in class is now writing response poems about Polyphemus (since we have to share a poem every day)

Empire in decline is a vibe, as we would say in West LA

Sort of amazing watching the scale of facilities issues and deferred maintenance pile up at the nation's top rated public
Since I started adjuncting here in 2017, things have gotten markedly worse

Now You See It...Now You DON'T!

Master magician Ricky Jay was a big fan of the Museum of Jurassic Technology, which recently (and briefly) caught on fire! In honor of Ricky and the ephemerality of all good things, here I am showing off the Newberry's 18th c. Blow Book like Ricky once taught me.
1/2

A friend described the poem I'm bringing to workshop tonight as "the best biblically and Greek mythology inspired gay cyclops poem I have ever read."
Take that Pulitzer

That tracks