Great news, pancreatic cancer is one of the worst. My mum was fit and healthy this time last year and passed away in August 2025 less than 3 months after her diagnosis.

Green cast sculpture of a cabbage leaf

Embroidery in shades of pinks and purples of a butchers display counter overlaid with a bunch of roses. The embroidery is mounted in a rectangular frame.

[uz], [uz], [uz] Featured Artist: Charlotte Dawson

Dawson is interested in commonplace objects as vessels for memory. She plays with hand-made/mass-produced, exploring the stories or histories surrounding objects and how material choices alter meanings.

#OnlineArtExchange @artukdotorg.bsky.social

People in the most deprived areas are now spending less than 50 years of their lives in good health Graphic: Years expected to be spent in states of "good" health and "poorer" health by sex and deprivation decile, England, 2022 to 2024

People in England’s most deprived areas spend less than 50 years of their lives in good health, a 20-year gap compared with those in the richest areas
www.ft.com/content/85de...

Such a good piece today from @jburnmurdoch.ft.com which shows that the declining graduate premium is very much a UK problem rather than a general (or inevevitable) consequence of more people going to uni www.ft.com/content/649d...

School book banning escalates in the UK as Greater Manchester secondary school censors scores of books - Index on Censorship A school librarian faced a disciplinary hearing and scores of books were removed from her school library after she stocked Laura Bates’ Men Who Hate Women

My excellent colleague @katiedd.bsky.social has just published this remarkable investigation into rampant book banning in a Greater Manchester secondary school library.

193 books including The Da Vinci Code, Twilight, White Teeth and 1984 Graphic Novel

www.indexoncensorship.org/2026/03/scho...

Happy Mothering Sunday! Title: Just in time for Mother's Day: Classic literature with added Mums Panel 1: Moby Dick "Ahab! Moby! Enough of this nonsense. Apologise to each other and if you can't get along, stay apart." says Ahab's mother, standing in a little boat and looking sternly into Moby's eye, while her son sits chastened behing her. Panel 2: Casino Royale. "Vodka martini, shaken not stirred... And a sweet sherry for my mother." says James Bond. His mother calls over from their table "Just a little one." Panel 3: The Lord of the Rings. "You can look for your ring after you tidy your room and walk the dog, Sauron." says Sauron's mother, holding out the dog lead to her son, who replies "Aw, mum!".

Happy Mothering Sunday!

Part of a page of a medieval manuscript that had a hole cut into it. Underneath it is a restoration of a large decorated B, which would have been in this place, and which was restored by Eliza. The letter emulates the medieval style of script, but the image inside it is in a late 18th century style, showing a verdant tree standing against a green bucolic landscape.

In the 1790s a London woman named Eliza Denyer developed a modest reputation as a restorer of medieval manuscripts. She was forgotten by scholars and, in one case, her restorations were deliberately replaced by a man’s. I recovered her story & tracked all her known work here: tinyurl.com/2ktztx2e

February issue of our Scholarly Communications Newsletter is out! Lots to read and catch up again incl. #MORPHSS catalogue, #UKrepo report, recent #AI guidelines, PRC model and more. mailchi.mp/f0f2902feb46...

Wishing you a wonderful wedding day

Job description British Library Advisory Council- Chair The British Library is entering a bold new era. As one of the world's leading national libraries, we hold over 170 million items and support millions of people across the UK and beyond with research, learning, and inspiration. This is a pivotal moment to join us as we begin an ambitious new chapter, expanding access, strengthening engagement, and shaping our future as a modern national library for the digital age.

OK so I know I carp on a bit about the British Library, but only because I think it’s important. They want a new Advisory Council Chair - surely someone here would be excellent in helping them get back to their core purpose of serving the research community?
ce0752li.webitrent.com/ce0752li_web...

Join us tomorrow for a demo of IIIF Illustration Detector!

Zoom link: iiif.io/community

It was lovely to see you.

Leeds University Library Galleries (@lulgalleries.bsky.social) Highlights from Cultural Collections & Galleries @universityofleeds.bsky.social Free and open to all. Visit us at The Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery, Treasures of the Brotherton, and Brotherton Rese...

Wonderful to see @lulgalleries.bsky.social on the BBC website with Dr. RJ Wade sharing insights into our latest exhibition www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Two people looking at illuminated medieval books displayed in a lit glass museum case.

Happy birthday to us! 🎂

Next week we celebrate ten years of Treasures of the Brotherton

We'll be joined by curators past and present to look back at a decade of exhibitions showcasing stories from our Cultural Collections - and you're invited!

RSVP: library.leeds.ac.uk/events/event...

🤖 @coar-repositories.bsky.social has announced the new Dealing with AI Bots website that provides a wealth of information on bots & #crawlers impacting the services and operations of open #repositories, including mitigation strategies. See:
coar-repositories.org/news-updates...

DISKAH network logo

The Call for applications for the DISKAH Fellowship scheme 2026-2027 is now OPEN! Funding is available to broaden skills for engagement with Digital Research Infrastructure #DRI in the #ArtsandHumanities research: www.diskah.org/fellowship-2...

A woman with long brown hair pulls a red book from a bookshelf.

Want to level up your library career this year?

We’re looking for international mid-career library and archive professionals to join us this summer at our International Library Leaders Programme.

Learn more link.bl.uk/ILLP2026

Field covered in snow with footprints and trees in the background.

Lovely walk in the crisp snow this morning.

Job Opportunity at University of Leeds: Lead Engineer (Digital Library) The interviews will be held on the 12 February 2026This role will be based on the university campus with scope for it to be undertaken in a hybrid manner. We are also open to discussing flexible worki...

At the University of Leeds, we are seeking a dynamic and highly skilled Lead Engineer to lead a project development team for Digital Library services, to support digital access to the Libraries’ Cultural Collections? It is a fantastic opportunity: jobs.leeds.ac.uk/vacancy.aspx...

A photograph of the University of Leeds campus from a birds eye view. The buildings in frame include the Parkinson building, Brotherton Library and West Chemistry block. The sun sets in the horizon in a beautiful array of dark blues, pinks and oranges. Paper cut out stars have been scrapbooked onto the photo around the title "Happy New Year from Cultural Collections & Galleries".

Happy New Year from Cultural Collections & Galleries! 🎆

We hope you've had a well deserved rest and we can't wait to welcome you back. 💜

Title: New year's resolution A man sits at a table with a coffee writing in a notebook: “This year i will devote myself completely to reading serious, improving literature, forsaking easy pleasures and tirelessly seeking out truth and profundity in the work of the greatest writers.” He looks at it Says: Hmm... then “Scratch Scratch Scratch scratch” scribbles out words until the text reads: “This year I will read for Fun”

Happy New Year, everyone!

This is a @theguardian.com books cartoon from a few years ago.

The 4 stages of eating cheese Eating cheese Still eating cheese Ate too much cheese Bit more cheese

Happy Christmas everyone, just remember, you'll get to stage 4 soon enough

Christmas tree outside the Great Hall

Christmas tree in Parkinson Court

Christmas on University of Leeds campus

We are hiring a Digitisation Studio Manager to manage our Cultural Heritage Digitisation Service! 📸📖🏛️🖥️

£41,064 - £48,822 per annum, full-time, open-ended

Closes 5 Jan 2026

elxw.fa.em3.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid...

@edinburgh-uni.bsky.social

Get in touch if you'd like to know more!

Job Klaxon! PDRA role at @designinf.bsky.social: with the data analytics team at CoSTAR Foresight Lab. Full time, 2026–29, contributing to UK wide #costarnetwork analysis on creative industries and creative technologies. Closes 5th Jan! Please share. elxw.fa.em3.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid...

small-language-models-trust-clark-ff2025-shared Reasoning with Small Language Models (SLM) to Create Trustworthy GenAI Jason A. Clark @jasonclark Montana State University Fantastic Futures 2025

Slides and code from my #ff2025 talk, "Reasoning with Small Language Models (SLM) for Trustworthy Generative AI (GenAI)."

Slides:
docs.google.com/presentation...

Code:
github.com/jasonclark/a...

A white woman with a dark bob on stage with a slide 'Five ideas for Fantastic Digital Futures'

Today we welcome both in-person and online participants to the first full day of #FF2025!

Check out the full programme at
www.conftool.org/fantastic-fu...

So excited to hear from Rachel Coldicutt as our opening keynote

#FantasticFutures2025

Introducing the Careful Consequence Check — Careful Industries A step-by-step guide to using the Careful Consequence Check canvas.

“Careful Consequence Check” mentioned in the #FF2025 opening keynote by
@rachelcoldicutt.bsky.social - www.careful.industries/blog/2025-11...

Compar:IA allows users to evaluate multiple LLMs, revealing over-/under-representations, biases, environmental footprint, etc in LLMs’ responses. This tool helps building a high-quality data sets in French and other non-English languages (including users’ prompts data). comparia.beta.gouv.fr #FF2025

Fantastic Futures 2025 - ConfTool Pro - BrowseSessions Overview and details of the sessions of this conference. Please select a date or location to show only sessions at that day or location. Please select a single session for detailed view (with…

Abstracts for the long papers on now www.conftool.org/fantastic-fu... and the short papers www.conftool.org/fantastic-fu... - find out more about brilliant work on maps, assessing archival records, computer vision and language models, and AI for art collections #FF2025