Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by John Russell

Martin Paul Eve @eve.gd · 7h

There's a big report out today from Cambridge University Press about transitioning to open access and the broader academic changes needed. Interested in the language they choose to adopt for this: "radical", "collective action", and lots of "diamond" talk within.

www.cambridge.org/core/service...

A poster for CUP's report, titled "Radical reform and collective action needed to secure future of academic publishing"

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Reposted by John Russell

Carol Chiodo, Ph.D. @digitaldante.bsky.social · 1d

for all of my #dhmakes peeps: super excited about this new journal interlace-journal.org It builds on some of the fantastic work from Sarah-Marie Belcastro and Carolyn Yackel: www.toroidalsnark.net/mkbook.html 🧵🪡 💻

Interlace home page

Interlace: A Journal of Mathematics and Fiber Arts

interlace-journal.org

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Reposted by John Russell

Tao Leigh Goffe | 道 | PhD @taoleighgoffe.bsky.social · 1d

Hiring 🚨 Part-time position 🚨 Remote - Research Fellow @ Dark Lab. Here’s your chance to build your experience as a humanities researcher while supporting my Lab’s mission of environmental justice & storytelling, centering the crossroads of stolen life & stolen land. 🧵

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John Russell @johnruss28.bsky.social · 1d

Must be something on my end. Looks like a great resource and I've sent the link to our subj specialist

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John Russell @johnruss28.bsky.social · 1d

I get 403 Forbidden on all the links I've clicked

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John Russell @johnruss28.bsky.social · 1d

pghrev.com/machine-visi... (on the Hinman Collator)

Machine Vision: On the Mechanical Origins of the Digital Humanities - Pittsburgh Review of Books

In his final decade, the Shakespeare scholar and bibliographer Charlton Hinman (1911–1977) began to lose his sight. Writing in an obituary published in The

pghrev.com

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Katie McDonough @kmcdono.bsky.social · 2d

During this period of open peer review of the Living w/Machines book, 2 new chapters are available:

1. MapReader - a deep cut on the epistemological shift it offers for computational map studies

2. Environmental Scan - a method for digital source criticism at scale

#skystorians #dh #maps #histstm

Ruth Ahnert @ruthahnert.bsky.social · 2d

Hey! We have two new draft chapters of the Living with Machines book up online for your delectation! One on Mapreader and one on the Environmental Scan. read.uolpress.co.uk/projects/liv...

Living with Machines | University of London Press

*Living With Machines* is a data-driven history of the coming of the machine age in Britain in the long nineteenth century. Featuring an innovative open access edition enhanced with interactive maps, ...

read.uolpress.co.uk

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Damon K @dadadrummer.bsky.social · 3d

My new book is out next week - here is how it starts… dadadrummer.substack.com/p/load-in

Load-In

An excerpt from Why Sound Matters

dadadrummer.substack.com

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Marisa Kabas @marisakabas.bsky.social · 7d

New — I was fortunate to speak in front of students and faculty at Grinnell College in Iowa tonight about the business of independent journalism, the current state of media under Trump 2.0, and billionaire control.

I published my full speech because I thought it might resonate beyond campus:

Truth, morality and independence in journalism under the second Trump regime

My full remarks to students and faculty at Grennell College.

www.thehandbasket.co

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John Russell @johnruss28.bsky.social · 7d

I can’t believe you never told me!

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John Russell @johnruss28.bsky.social · 7d

I will have to investigate and maybe move meetings there

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John Russell @johnruss28.bsky.social · 7d

I work here and did not know this! This should be part of new employee orientation

Scott 🦇Cave🦇 @hellabarnes.bsky.social · 7d

something no one mentions about Penn State is that there is a fully articulated skeleton of the mule that helped build the original buildings in the student union

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Reposted by John Russell

Ryan Cordell @ryancordell.org · 7d

If you work with historical newspaper data, check out @matthewkollmer.com’s tutorial for generating image clippings—sections of the full page—based on text & coordinate data. Matthew’s been doing yeoman’s work figuring this in for a forthcoming exhibit for our Virality of Racial Terror project

Matthew Kollmer @matthewkollmer.com · 8d

If you, like me, sometimes need to generate thousands of clipping images from Chronicling America, then you may find this post helpful.

It provides my pipeline (code and explanatory text) for programmatically generating newspaper clipping images via the Chronicling America API.

How to Create Newspaper Clipping Images in Chronicling America, Programmatically – Matthew Johannes Kollmer

matthewkollmer.com

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Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 12d

New preprint 🌟 Psychology is core to cognitive science, and so it is vital we preserve it from harmful frames. @irisvanrooij.bsky.social & I use our psych and computer science expertise to analyse and craft:

Critical Artificial Intelligence Literacy for Psychologists. doi.org/10.31234/osf...

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Cover page of Guest, O., & van Rooij, I. (2025, October 4). Critical Artificial Intelligence Literacy for Psychologists. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/dkrgj_v1

Table 1 Guest, O., & van Rooij, I. (2025, October 4). Critical Artificial Intelligence Literacy for Psychologists. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/dkrgj_v1

Table 2 Guest, O., & van Rooij, I. (2025, October 4). Critical Artificial Intelligence Literacy for Psychologists. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/dkrgj_v1

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John Russell @johnruss28.bsky.social · 13d

He said it is all good

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John Russell @johnruss28.bsky.social · 13d

Thanks! I will ask Jeff

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John Russell @johnruss28.bsky.social · 13d

This uses a MARC dataset shared by a Penn State cataloger

Daniel van Strien @danielvanstrien.bsky.social · 13d

New @hf.co BigLAM dataset: 9,363 OA books with page images + rich MARC metadata for evaluating (and training) VLMs on metadata extraction.

Libraries are starting to explore AI-assisted cataloguing, but we lack public evaluation data. Hoping this helps fill that gap.

huggingface.co/datasets/big...

Screenshot of the dataset viewer showing a column of marc data + the first few pages of an open access monograph

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John Russell @johnruss28.bsky.social · 16d

Today I learned that the Louvre has a proton accelerator in their basement!

Le Monde @lemonde.fr · 17d

Nucléaire : un travailleur irradié par Aglaé, l’accélérateur de particules du Louvre

Cet incident, qui a eu lieu pendant l’été, est le plus grave observé par l’Autorité de sûreté nucléaire et de radioprotection depuis dix-sept ans. Unique au monde, l’installation est à l’arrêt.

www.lemonde.fr

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Reposted by John Russell

Dr Adam James Smith @elementaladam.bsky.social · 22d

People of Print: Eighteenth-Century England is out today and free to download until 7 Oct:

www.cambridge.org/core/element...

Edited by Rachel Stenner, Kaley Kramer & I, this volume collects 10 new biographical essays about lesser known, diverse figures involved in the #18C print trade.

The People of Print

Cambridge Core - Printing and Publishing History - The People of Print

www.cambridge.org

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Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.bsky.social · 23d

I was part of a working group on AI and Fraternity assembled by the Vatican. We met in Rome and worked on this over two days. I am happy to share the result of that intense effort: a Declaration we presented to the Pope and other government authorities

coexistence.global

In this spirit of fraternity, hope and caution, we call upon your leadership to uphold the following principles and red lines to foster dialogue and reflection on how AI can best serve our entire human family:

Human life and dignity: AI must never be developed or used in ways that threaten, diminish, or disqualify human life, dignity, or fundamental rights. Human intelligence – our capacity for wisdom, moral reasoning, and orientation toward truth and beauty – must never be devalued by artificial processing, however sophisticated.

AI must be used as a tool, not an authority: AI must remain under human control. Building uncontrollable systems or over-delegating decisions is morally unacceptable and must be legally prohibited. Therefore, development of superintelligence (as mentioned above) AI technologies should not be allowed until there is broad scientific consensus that it will be done safely and controllably, and there is clear and broad public consent.

Accountability: only humans have moral and legal agency and AI systems are and must remain legal objects, never subjects. Responsibility and liability reside with developers, vendors, companies, deployers, users, institutes, and governments. AI cannot be granted legal personhood or “rights”.

Life-and-death decisions: AI systems must never be allowed to make life or death decisions, especially in military applications during armed conflict or peacetime, law enforcement, border control, healthcare or judicial decisions.

Independent testing and adequate risk assessment must be required before deployment and throughout the entire lifecycle.
Stewardship: Governments, corporations, and anyone else should not weaponize AI for any kind of domination, illegal wars of aggression, coercion, manipulation, social scoring, or unwarranted mass surveillance.

Responsible design: AI should be designed and independently evaluated to avoid unintentional and catastrophic effects on humans and society, for example through design giving rise to deception, delusion, addiction, or loss of autonomy.

No AI monopoly: the benefits of AI – economic, medical, scientific, social – should not be monopolized.

No Human Devaluation: design and deployment of AI should make humans flourish in their chosen pursuits, not render humanity redundant, disenfranchised, devalued or replaceable.

Ecological responsibility: our use of AI must not endanger our planet and ecosystems. Its vast demands for energy, water, and rare minerals must be managed responsibly and sustainably across the whole supply chain.

No irresponsible global competition: We must avoid an irresponsible race between corporations and countries towards ever more powerful AI.

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Sarah T Roberts, PhD @ubiquity75.xyz · 25d

www.cnet.com/home/interne...

Alternative Broadband Networks: Affordable Internet for the People, One Rooftop at a Time

Volunteer-based organizations like NYC Mesh aim to close the digital divide and build real-life connections.

www.cnet.com

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John Russell @johnruss28.bsky.social · 28d

CollectiveAccess? docs.collectiveaccess.org

Welcome to the CollectiveAccess documentation! | CollectiveAccess Documentation

See our Quickstart page for information on installing CollectiveAccess or the component specific Providence and

docs.collectiveaccess.org

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Reposted by John Russell

Sara Arribas Colmenar @sararribas.bsky.social · Sep 11

On Sept. 25 at 11 AM I will be at the @scholarslab.bsky.social presenting ¨Nails and Nodes: Making Digital Social Networks Analysis Tangible¨. Join me to discover how data-driven SNA can move off the screen into a string data art installation! Registration here cal.lib.virginia.edu/calendar/eve...

Scholars' Lab Artist & Methods Talk: Data Art Prize Winner Sara Arribas Colmenar

After fielding a robust pool of applicants in our inaugural year, we are thrilled to welcome our 2025-2026 Data Art Prize Finalist, Sara Arribas Colmenar, to the Scholars’ Lab....

cal.lib.virginia.edu

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Marcus Falk (She/They) @attusfalk.bsky.social · Sep 5

The database from my PhD-dissertation is finally publicly available! Detailed data from 3250 south-Swedish probate records, both urban and rural, from between 1570 and the 1860s, free for anyone to use for your own projects.

www.lusem.lu.se/organisation...

South-Sweden Probate Inventory Database, 1570–1860

Lund University. Both labourers and farmers improved their material living standards – as measured by the contents of probate inventories – but the labouring households’ ownership of means of producti...

www.lusem.lu.se

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John Russell @johnruss28.bsky.social · Sep 8

The image embeddings notebook looks so good!

Laura K. Nelson @lauraknelson.bsky.social · Sep 7

When I go on and on about how we should teach all undergrads, in every discipline, ML/AI, this is what I mean.

We don't need to, and quite frankly shouldn't, stick more black (chat) boxes in front of students to teach them about AI.

Laura K. Nelson @lauraknelson.bsky.social · Sep 5

At long last, I can post my team's summer project: applied modules to teach how ML/AI tools are changing social science and humanities research: ubcecon.github.io/praxis-ubc/

Highlights:

LegalBERT to analyze anti/pro-immigrant sentiment in 19th c. BC law: ubcecon.github.io/praxis-ubc/d...
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