Two headphone-wearing people seated in the "Listen" station at the Internet Archive, surrounded by shelves with record albums.

A person at the Internet Archive turning the pages of a book being digitized on a "scribe" station, which uses two cameras to shoot opposing pages simultaneously.

A person at the Internet Archive operating a Lasergraphics ScanStation digital film scanner, in the procress of scanning 8mm film.

Server racks with blue "blinkenlights" at the Internet Archive.

Hooray for #NationalLibraryWeek! 📚

Internet Archive's mission is Universal Access to All Knowledge, and we’re proud to be a Federal Depository Library.

Books 📖, movies 🎞️, music 🎧, software 💾, web pages 🌐 and much more await on the Internet Archive: the library in your pocket.

➡️ www.archive.org

It Was on Your Table Every Morning Growing Up. It’s Dying Before Our Eyes. No One Wants to Face It. The powerhouse of American citrus is suffering a brutal decline. Everyone has a theory about why.

Totally off-topic, but did y'all the know the Free State of Florida's citrus industry is basically dead??

This is quite a story:
slate.com/business/202...

Happy Earth Day! 🌎

Password Strength

I subscribe to @xkcd.com take on passwords. The trick is to be creative.
xkcd.com/936/

Librarians are the best. I've celebrated by using Kanopy, Libby and reading a library book today!

Consider your local library or inter-library loan too :)

Let me know if you want more recs. It’s an interesting question which has linguistics, philosophy, literary studies, neuroscience, and science approaches.

From my understanding of some of the research literature, people also approach long form reading (books) differently from short form

Reading and Psychology I. Reading Minds: Fiction and Its Relation to the Mental Worlds of Self and Others Positing a sense of purpose as more valuable to mental health and wellbeing than the pursuit of pleasure or happiness, this chapter surveys the evidence for reading as a life-sustaining activity in part because of its emphasis on meaning-of-life issues. It considers...

Article…
Corcoran, Rhiannon and Oatley, Keith. (2019). Reading and Psychology I. Reading Minds: Fiction and Its Relation to the Mental Worlds of Self and Others. In: Billington, J. (eds) Reading and Mental Health. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. doi.org/10.1007/978-...

Another, a bit older.

How Literature Plays with the Brain: The Neuroscience of Reading and Art / by
Paul B. Armstrong. John’s Hopkins University Press, 2014.

Here’s a start?
Psychology of Reading: an Interdisciplinary Approach/ by Rayner, Alexander Pollatsek, Jane Ashby, Charles Clifton Jr. Taylor & Francis, 2017 (2nd Ed.).

On this day in 1995, the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City was bombed. 168 men, women, and children were murdered and hundreds more were injured. 1/

Today is the 251st anniversary of Paul Revere's midnight ride to warn the Minutemen of approaching British troops.

I want to take a moment to share an excerpt from the Declaration of Independence's grievances against King George III.

Remind you of anyone?

Sitting here crying while after getting WhatsApped the photo on the right, so let me tell you a little story about how we got here from the photo on the left and why repatriation research matters!

Future flood-induced losses are projected to be comparable to or even exceed drought-induced losses in many regions and globally exhibit distinct spatial and temporal patterns.

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

So glad this story is gaining traction & wanted to highlight that @andrewdeck.bsky.social at @niemanlab.org broke the news that NYT/Guardian/USA Today were blocking IA earlier this year. Encourage all to read: www.niemanlab.org/2026/01/news...

From duopoly to monopoly

18th-century printed document dated July 1775 (possibly 5th or 6th), with a small rectangle of brown cloth attached, and the punched mark of the Boston Public Library in the middle. Watertown, July 6th, 1775 GENTLEMEN, IN Obedience to the Order of Congress we have proportioned Thirteen Thousand Coats on all the Towns and Districts in this Colony, excepting Boston and Charlestown; and have inclosed you the Proportion, with their Resolves, and a Sample as a Direction to you both as to the Colour and Quality of the Cloth which shall be Manufactured by you, and of the Quality of the imported Cloths of which the Coats shall be made: We are to assure you that the Coats you supply shall be delivered to the Men of your Town so far as Circumstances will admit. We are, Gentlemen, respectfully, your most humble Servants, DAVID CHEEVER, Chairman. P. S A large Number of Shirts, Stockings and Summer Breeches are wanted immediately for the Use of the Army, you are therefore earnestly requested, as you value the Lives and Health of your Countrymen, to furnish this Committee as soon as possible, with a large Number of the said Articles, not less than two Shirts, two pair of Stockings and two pair of Summer Breeches to each Coat, apportioned as the Share of your Town-----and fend them as soon as procured to Mr. William Hunt, at Watertown---We shall be ready to Order Payment for the fame as soon as receiv'd, according to the Prices which you shall certify, relying on your judgment to prevent Impositions upon the Soldiers.

square of brown felted wool in a mid grayish brown, tacked to the page with two long stitches and two short

Today, I saw this 1775 document: a letter directing the people of Massachusetts to make 13,000 coats for the colony's soldiers. This copy was for Stoughtonham [Sharon].

The archivists @bpl.boston.gov helped me check under the cloth sample to see if the walnut brown color had faded. It had not!

Quote post with something good that lasted longer than the Confederacy (1861-1865)

The Wire (2002-2008)

Really? I think the Eastern Orthodox Churches and Oriental Orthodox Churches do not have the Roman Catholic Church as their foundation.

((Still plugging away at Diarmaid MacCulloch’s door-stopper of a history of Christianity…))

Credit to the Block family for selling to the non-profit Banner at a discount. They were offered significantly more by a for-profit chain that would have further gutted the paper. They saw what rhe Banner is doing in Maryland and opted for civic responsibility.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette avoids closure, will continue to publish thanks to nonprofit sale

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette will continue to publish now that it's been purchased by the Baltimore Banner's parent company, turning the paper into a nonprofit news outlet.

A Confrontation with Truth What it means to live in a deeply sick country that worships killing. Diagnosis as the first step of any journey toward health.

"If I'm sick, I'm sick whether I believe it or not. My refusal to be persuaded will not keep me from sickness; it will only keep me from remedy. But I won't be able to make a choice about truth unless I hear it.

"Fundamentally, healing involves confrontation." www.the-reframe.com/a-confrontat...

The Internet's Most Powerful Archiving Tool Is in Peril As major news outlets cut off the Wayback Machine, journalists and advocacy groups are rallying to protect the Internet Archive’s vast collection of web pages.

"A kneecapped Wayback Machine isn’t just bad news for accountability journalism—it will also be a blow to the legal system, as pages archived by the tool are frequently cited as evidence in litigation across the United States."

‘Everyone is Replaceable’: Death Rattles Oregon Amazon Facility A worker died at Amazon’s Troutdale warehouse last week. Employees were told to look away.

A worker died at an Amazon warehouse in Oregon last week.

For more than an hour, workers were instructed to continue working as the man lay dead.

One worker wanted to help, but a manager told them to “Just turn around and not look. Let’s get back to work," according to @thewesternedge.bsky.social.

look at the library funds.

Eliminating libraries in prisons is a disaster, completely shortsighted. Libraries are a lifeline for incarcerated people who want to learn and grow, and have few other options.

I maintain that among the media's biggest mistakes has been continuing to ask Trump questions as if he's a normal guy instead of asking things like "Can you explain who Jesus is" or "Describe the process of pumping gas"

Data citations are already in Crossref #metadata, they've just been difficult to locate among millions of references. Our new data citation API endpoint (beta) makes these connections easier to find and track. Learn more: https://doi.org/10.64000/rzbn5-wjy58

But Tuesday has given momentum to those trying to rein Trump in. Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD), the top-ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, made a record of Trump’s recent bizarre behavior in a letter today to the president’s personal physician, Captain Sean P. Barbabella.