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Posts by Laura O'Brien

Literally had their tempeh BLT for lunch today--a hearty vegetarian sandwich has a lot of appeal to me, even if it's often got something deep fried. I like the plant-based menu and my kids do, too. I will be so sad if they close!

3 weeks ago 3 0 0 0

This is enshittification (yes it's a "free" account, but I'm paying in data). Why is a "secure digital environment" even necessary in this context? help.oclc.org/Discovery_an...

1 month ago 1 0 0 1
recently my friend's comics professor told her that it's acceptable to use gen AI for script-writing but not for art, since a machine can't generate meaningful artistic work. meanwhile, my sister's screenwriting professor said that they can use gen AI for concept art and visualization, but that it won't be able to generate a script that's any good. and at my job, it seems like each department says that AI can be useful in every field except the one that they know best.

It's only ever the jobs we're unfamiliar with that we assume can be replaced with automation. The more attuned we are with certain processes, crafts, and occupations, the more we realize that gen AI will never be able to provide a suitable replacement. The case for its existence lies on our ignorance of the work and skill required to do everything we don't.

By magicmosshka, yesterday's

recently my friend's comics professor told her that it's acceptable to use gen AI for script-writing but not for art, since a machine can't generate meaningful artistic work. meanwhile, my sister's screenwriting professor said that they can use gen AI for concept art and visualization, but that it won't be able to generate a script that's any good. and at my job, it seems like each department says that AI can be useful in every field except the one that they know best. It's only ever the jobs we're unfamiliar with that we assume can be replaced with automation. The more attuned we are with certain processes, crafts, and occupations, the more we realize that gen AI will never be able to provide a suitable replacement. The case for its existence lies on our ignorance of the work and skill required to do everything we don't. By magicmosshka, yesterday's

the discourse on what jobs are acceptable to replace with generative AI reveals a lot about what we think of other people's jobs

3 months ago 9636 4328 96 181
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Opinion | Stop Pretending You Know How to Teach AI Colleges are racing to make students ‘fluent.’ One problem: No one knows what that means.

I agree that we don’t already know how to teach “AI literacy” well. But I also think literacy is too modest a goal. College students should graduate knowing how ML works; it’s liberal knowledge analogous to RNA or trig, not search-engine skills or Excel. And we do know how to teach it in that way.

4 months ago 90 18 6 3
Photo of the front cover of a standard-sized (half sheet) zine titled "Queer Book History: a tasting from SHARP's 2025 Queer Book History Bibliography. By Visconti; Wingate; Keller, Coker; et al.". The cover background uses a glitched photo of a handwritten manuscript.

Photo of the front cover of a standard-sized (half sheet) zine titled "Queer Book History: a tasting from SHARP's 2025 Queer Book History Bibliography. By Visconti; Wingate; Keller, Coker; et al.". The cover background uses a glitched photo of a handwritten manuscript.

Photo of the table of contents of a standard-sized (half sheet) zine titled "Queer Book History: a tasting from SHARP's 2025 Queer Book History Bibliography. By Visconti; Wingate; Keller, Coker; et al.". The table covers 32 pages and says:
• Credits & how to cite this zine.
• Introduction
Resources:
• Intro to general book history
• Intro to QUEER book history!
• Teaching queer history toward
• A model teaching approach
• Black, Indigenous, POC + Queer
• Broader BIPOC book history
• Zines, community periodicals, DIY queer publishing history
• Libraries, archives, museums
• Archives & catalogues
• Design & art.
• Close readings
• Ethics & justice re:gender & sexuality
• Feminist 2SLGBTQIA+
• Community & conferences
• Queer book history isn't past
• Current book arts practitioners relevant to queer book history
• Want more queer book history?
• Back cover & reuse/ remix info

Photo of the table of contents of a standard-sized (half sheet) zine titled "Queer Book History: a tasting from SHARP's 2025 Queer Book History Bibliography. By Visconti; Wingate; Keller, Coker; et al.". The table covers 32 pages and says: • Credits & how to cite this zine. • Introduction Resources: • Intro to general book history • Intro to QUEER book history! • Teaching queer history toward • A model teaching approach • Black, Indigenous, POC + Queer • Broader BIPOC book history • Zines, community periodicals, DIY queer publishing history • Libraries, archives, museums • Archives & catalogues • Design & art. • Close readings • Ethics & justice re:gender & sexuality • Feminist 2SLGBTQIA+ • Community & conferences • Queer book history isn't past • Current book arts practitioners relevant to queer book history • Want more queer book history? • Back cover & reuse/ remix info

"Queer Book History" zine is done (32 pages!), just getting final team edits pre-pub. Built on upcoming @sharpnews.bsky.social Queer Book History Bibliography—100s of resources by team led by SHARP Bibliographer @bibliowingate.bsky.social. Zine=fave reads, teaching examples, community+conf info +

8 months ago 100 38 2 9

Ditto! we'd love to acquire one as well

8 months ago 0 0 0 0

Instead of regurgitating the bromide that LLMs are just "autocomplete on steroids" (even by people who know better), maybe we can actually engage in some public education. The problem with genAI is better expressed through a classic computer science concept, known as SYMBOL GROUNDING. 🧵

8 months ago 857 293 35 94

I'll ask my Storymap users on campus if they've seen this before and if I hear anything I'll let you know. Good luck!

8 months ago 1 0 1 0

I'm not 100% sure what process you were using (I'm on Mac, not Windows), but is it something like this? It looks they are using a Zoomify function in Photoshop to make tiles hosted in Github. It's 5 year old documentation, but I didn't find much more current bpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/sites.psu.ed...

8 months ago 1 0 1 0
The impact of language models on the humanities and vice versa Nature Computational Science - Many humanists are skeptical of language models and concerned about their effects on universities. However, researchers with a background in the humanities are also...

New this morning, a Comment I contributed to Nature Computational Science on the interaction between large language models and the humanities. 🧪 🤖 #MLSky

rdcu.be/etk07

The link above will be open-access for a month — plus, I'll reply to this post with a link to a permanently open preprint. +

9 months ago 170 55 14 8
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Slowing Down in Library Management: A Perspective from a Branch Campus Academic library administrators at branch campuses face a variety of issues at both the local level and within their larger institutions. In such busy environments, the lessons of “slow librariansh...

Hi 📚 friends! I wrote a reflection article for the latest issue of the Journal of Library Administration. It's about my experiences with applying the lessons of slow librarianship to management:

9 months ago 8 3 0 0

"When people write things drawing on ideas I recognize from the literature without citing them, I feel a kind of rage because either they think their idea is novel due to not doing the reading or they know their idea is not novel and they have elected to pass it off as so."

9 months ago 1 0 0 0
Video

#DHMakes edges finished! What do you think?

9 months ago 24 3 3 1

Thank you! I'm checking back through your #DHMakes posts for the basics, but I'm sure there's much more to it. Did you rely on Gephi for the initial spatialization? (If you ever write your project up anywhere, let me know! It's beautiful as is of course)

9 months ago 1 0 1 0

I LOVE this! I want to show this to my DH network analysis class this fall--I would love if someone made a physicalization of a network for their final project!

9 months ago 1 0 1 0

To put it another way—no one in power in 2025—not politicians, not tech oligarchs, not business tycoons—seem in the least concerned that AI might challenge them or our power structures—& that is an important media history distinction we should notice & learn from, practically & intellectually (3/4)

9 months ago 63 18 3 1

Very curious if yr turning on the PRIMO AI research assistant or not. Today I heard about 2 big academic library systems + one big university library saying *no* & not turning it on. I'd love to see what the landscape looks like.

Is your library turning on PRIMO ai research assistant? Why/why not?

11 months ago 31 18 15 1

An interesting question in a students’ reflection on "format" across book & digital media. With books, we have associations of prestige with particular formats—is the same true for file formats? To put it simply, are some file formats—consciously or subconsciously—"fancier" than others?

11 months ago 16 4 10 1
File types hanging out
File types hanging out YouTube video by Elle Cordova

I think there can be some implicit hierarchy. youtu.be/T8dVdye559E?...

11 months ago 10 2 0 0

Thiiiiis. I want things like “vaccine uptake high enough for herd immunity” and “public transit”, and I literally cannot provide them for myself.

11 months ago 40 10 2 1
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That last question — when we are in the position to rebuild, what will we need to have? (when, not if!) — is one I arrived at after listening to a team I’m on trying to figure out what to do about our grant funding being rescinded. It’s really the question that is keeping me going.

1 year ago 60 15 1 1

Now that I've used bluesky for liveposting a conference, can I say that I love that it *requires* me to include alt text before posting media? Accessible by design!

1 year ago 0 0 0 0

When my students ask me "what was the most significant change in the last 100 years?" they always expect me to say "the Internet" or "space travel." But most Americans fundamentally don't understand either "some of your siblings will die young" or "women are pregnant or nursing for 1/2 their lives."

1 year ago 807 239 5 9

Paviwala compiled a dataset from Chaudhuri (1976) and Bowen (2005) on the commodities dealt with by East India Trading Company and their values. Disambiguating and merging data categories across decades and respective scholarly interests #BostonDH25

1 year ago 0 0 0 0
Wikipedia image of regions impacted by the East India Trading Company

Wikipedia image of regions impacted by the East India Trading Company

Finally we have
Building a Digital Trade Archive: Visualizing British East India Company Data (1660–1834) with Munirmahedi Paviwala (Boston College) #BostonDH25

1 year ago 1 0 1 0
Catholic Directory project schema

Catholic Directory project schema

I love a data schema 🤗 #BostonDH25

1 year ago 1 0 2 0
Joanna Schroeder presents an Example:

How do we assign IDs to people?

Translate rules to processes

Students correct any incorrect generated IDs "corrected IDs")

Joanna Schroeder presents an Example: How do we assign IDs to people? Translate rules to processes Students correct any incorrect generated IDs "corrected IDs")

Students working on this large-scale DH project develop research skills and regional expertise that lets them help disambiguate which people with the same/similar names are indeed the same individual #BostonDH25

1 year ago 0 0 1 0
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Next up is Turning Almanacs into Data with Ashlyn Stewart, Joanna Schroeder, Yuchen Xiong (Boston College) #BostonDH25 digitizing 19th c Catholic Directories, with information on dioceses and Catholics across the U.S.

1 year ago 0 0 1 0