Devin Fitzgerald, bibliothot

Hit me with some things to read! Anything after 1720 is out of my usual wheelhouse

Fortunately this field is wide open and super easy. (Actually would be fun to do with quartos (we have none). So will have to think 18th century collections, alas.)

Oh shit, someone wants me to do a Shakespeare book history/bibliography session. I've spent my entire career trying to prevent this. Their touch affrights me as a serpent's sting

Damn. Now I'm going to be thinking about this. This is a real debate

Sort of a perfect patron. Bothered all of us to help, made people, even students, curious about incunabula. Curators are busy, but I always love trying to make 15 minutes to chat with people when I can.

It was very cute. His email was cryptic so I had to go pull the book out and check myself since he "didn't want to spoil the surprise!"

A visiting scholar found quite the provenance hiding in a heavily annotated book. Signature had been washed, but it's definitely
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatus_...

The suffering politics of the left could learn that last shall be first and first last. We will get nowhere if we keep at it

God the left is so insufferable. Bitches people got rent to pay, kids to take care of. Can't expect everyone to have tapestries on their wall at 30 after mom and dad funded their liberal arts and continued partial employment (which is why you have so much time to fight for justice).

If you want ideological purity, do I have the place for you: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_S...

If you want to virtue signal being woke first, get ready for more turns to the right, simply because you are an annoying fuck.

My favorite part of the American left is how it attacks itself. My wonderful radical queers, pls, do not feel free to attack ppl for only now tuning in to American fascism as the ignored Gaza/X/BLM. A conversion is a conversion. You think evangelicals are getting on ppl for finding Christ late?

The pandemic world is: everyone is always sick. It seems like every 3 months something rips through special collections. It's absolutely maddening

Let imaginations run wild about [redacted]. Best guess wins a prize

Just so everyone knows, @periodeye.bsky.social is a goddamn queen.

Right? People are out here acting like law matters at all anymore. It's truly naive.

Live footage of Hannah Arendt's dichotomy between violence and power.

We are dealing with a Western Christian supremacist movement willing to see millions die in the name of racial purity. This is William Wolfe. A year ago he was invited with fourteen other faith leaders to the WH. Today he is praising ICE for killing peaceful observers. This is Christian fascism.

Just a note on the book, which is a mid Mind government edition, although water damaged.
Probably printed just before Gutenberg

Love notes like this left in books by earlier librarians. This profession runs on the hope of ever having time to love things as they deserve, and our archives are full of the epitaphs of good intentions.

Moving after divorce is gradually stepping up from disposable crap furniture that is plywood composed of broken hearts into mid century modern.

ICE raids are not the first time this was made explicit. I think people downplay how much Jim Crow was not just about controlling Black people but it was also about controlling white people. If you thought racism was dumb and acted that way you could end up with a bomb in your home

Correct. Obviously I have been book pilled by tik tok deep fakes

Absolutely! I think the only issue that really matters is institutional divestment in core research support.

Also, I'm in Stockholm every year for family, and always looking for people who aren't my 2yo neice to grab drinks with. You can tell me what to do with all these Thai manuscripts at ucla!

To be 100% my UL, AUL, etc are all totally aligned to keep trying to build. So this is not a myopic perspective of a persecuted staff member. Everyone here loves their job. We are all tired, and most discussions are about how to keep going for our patrons. People come in sick, etc.

In other words, we need more labor everywhere, not less. The information world is more complicated now, and universities are in the business of information. Failure to build and hire in all areas will mean intellectual involution across the academy.

In other words, we are fucked. No regent cares.

To be clear: there is no work around except reinvestment. There is no cutting staff, there is no 'more with less.' Digital tools have actually created a whole new area for specialists. Eg, we don't need just a ms, rare book, and literary curator now, we need a digital curator and assorted processors

And anyways, even people with range (me and all of my much more talented friends) are heading towards burnout at unprecedented levels. Anyone over 40 is a shambling husk, energy sapped by a period of endless crises response. I cannot even track any longer the sheer number of things I have dropped.

My job, which used to be 2.5 jobs, hums along with minimal disruption mostly because 1) I work in ways most agree are statistically rare (many languages etc.) And 2) I've turned down opportunities for more $ because I like LA. But the brain drain is real - and whole departments are 'despecializing'

In previous periods of crisis, we maintained optimism about "rebuilding." Now, the conversation has shifted. It's not "when the money comes back..." it's "we need to keep learning to do more with less."

This is impossible. It relies on luck and talent to keep things shambling. There is no plan