Yesterday I gave a talk on AI and archives at the Colby/Bates/Bowdoin Special Collections and Archives Staff Retreat. Thanks to the staff of the George J. Mitchell Department of Archives and Special Collections and the Bowdoin Library, the amazing Schiller Center for Coastal Studies, where the event was held, and Bowdoin’s Hastings Initiative for AI […]
When I spend time with kids, I become hyperconscious of my word choices. “Look at Mr. Frog in the pond. Doesn’t he look grumpy?” Why did I say Mr. Frog? Why did I say he? Where do these gendered presumptions even come from, and how pervasive are they? Is it common to assume that a […]
Last spring dh+lib published the special issue “Making Research Tactile: Critical Making and Data Physicalization in Digital Humanities,” which featured seven case studies on ways critical making could be integrated into a digital humanities (DH) research practice. This follow-up special issue features concrete ways we can integrate critical making into our (library) instruction. Given the […]
Capturing mixed social identities through categorical data presents significant challenges. Nonbinarity provides a conceptual, computational, and visual framework for reimagining social identities beyond binary oppositions. When applied beyond gender to domains such as language, culture, or ethnicity, nonbinarity reveals the complex and sometimes contradictory ways individuals experience social belonging. In this way, it complements intersectionality […]
There’s a fascinating piece of research out from Anthropic. Agentic Misalignment: How LLMs could be insider threats. Maybe you’ve seen it doing the rounds this weekend as it landed on Friday I think. There’s a lot of hyperbolic reaction, even for something that merits serious concern. Nevertheless, it seems these things aren’t ready to be […]
For their South Bay book launch of The AI Con, Dr. Emily M. Bender and Dr. Alex Hanna joined us in conversation with Rhonda Holberton, Digital Media Arts & Chair of the Department of Art & Art History at SJSU. In THE AI CON: How To Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We […]
The phantasmagorias of space to which the flaneur devotes himself find a counterpart in the phantasmagorias of time to which the gambler is addicted. Gambling converts time into a narcotic (Benjamin 1999: 12). The disruption that Benjamin identified in the gambling halls finds unexpected resonance in today’s computational interfaces. The rise of “prompt engineering” as […]
The Library of Congress launched the By the People crowdsourced transcription program in 2018. Since then, we have invited anyone to volunteer by transcribing Library of Congress digital collections through our online platform, Concordia. Completed transcriptions go back into Library of Congress digital collections on loc.gov to make them keyword searchable and improve accessibility. We […]
The journey to conceptualizing this special issue started in a summer seminar organized by the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR). Since 2004, through its postdoctoral fellowship program, CLIR has recruited, trained, and established cohorts of talented researchers steeped in the materials and methods of their disciplines for work in libraries and cultural organizations. […]
Over the past year, I have been working on a textual analysis project exploring Japanese understandings of Judaism, Israel, and Zionism during the Meiji (1868-1912) and Taishō periods (1912-1926) as a part of a fellowship at Brandeis University’s Schusterman Center for Israel Studies, Institute for Advanced Israel Studies. In fact, I am writing this article […]
