[Last week, it was my privilege to participate in an event celebrating the anniversary of centers and institutes that have — for 30 years — supported digital humanities research, scholarship, teaching, and organizing at my alma mater and first professional employer, the University of Virginia — which is to say, the people and organizations that educated me, sustained and supported my growth, and gave me so many unexpected opportunities and gifts. A joyous reunion weekend on the Lawn was quickly followed by campus tragedy. My heart goes out to the families and friends of the victims, to student ..read more

I’m sharing here remarks I offered today at the 2022 DH Unbound conference. The occasion was a plenary roundtable honoring the work and legacy of my friend and digital humanities collaborator Dr. Stéfan Sinclair (1972-2020). The session was moderated and introduced by Susan Brown (University of Guelph), and—alongside tributes from the audience—the other moving speakers were Michael Sinatra (Université de Montréal), Geoffrey Rockwell (University of Alberta), Diane Jakacki (Bucknell University), and Constance Crompton (University of Ottawa). Some time late last summer, a software update made St ..read more

[Late last month, I was honored to deliver the annual James E. McLeod Memorial Lecture on Higher Education at Washington University in St. Louis. I wasn’t planning to post this one as it feels decidedly half-baked to me. But now — two weeks later — the swift lifting of coronavirus restrictions in the United States (amid so much “back to normal” rhetoric on our campuses and in state and national politics) makes me think there might be some value in sharing. This is the beginning of a project I hope to get back to.] This is a talk about the role of libraries, museums, and archives as cultural me ..read more

Congratulations to Melissa Terras and Paul Gooding on the publication of an important new collection of essays entitled Electronic Legal Deposit: Shaping the Library Collections of the Future! This volume takes a global outlook on challenges and successes in preserving digital information, and stems from their Digital Library Futures AHRC project, which first analyzed the impact of electronic legal deposit legislation on academic libraries and their users in the UK. More from Melissa here, including “An Ark to Save Learning from Deluge? Reconceptualising Legal Deposit after the Digital Turn ..read more

“The beauty of anti-racism is that you don’t have to pretend to be free of racism to be an anti-racist. Anti-racism is the commitment to fight racism wherever you find it, including in yourself. And it’s the only way forward.” — Ijeoma Oluo, author of So You Want to Talk About Race. Black lives matter. Too long have we allowed acts of racism and deeply ingrained, institutionalized forces of white supremacy to devalue, endanger, and grievously harm Black people and members of other minoritized and marginalized groups. State-sanctioned violence and racial terror exist alongside slower and more d ..read more

[It’s been almost a year since I’ve posted anything here. My first eleven months as dean of the JMU Libraries have been full of joy — and of challenges that global and national events have placed before our indomitable, blended team of librarians and educational technologists. On Monday morning, having intended to write a very different letter (related to campus-wide “re-opening” plans in the context of the pandemic), I found I had something else to address. Many of my colleagues in library directorships elsewhere have been sharing their messages to staff, and I thought I would reciprocate — w ..read more

[The following is a brief talk I gave at the opening plenary of RBMS 2019, a meeting of the Rare Books and Manuscripts section of the ACRL/ALA. This year’s theme was “Response and Responsibility: Special Collections and Climate Change,” and my co-panelists were Frances Beinecke of the National Resources Defense Council and Brenda Ekwurzel of the Union of Concerned Scientists. Many thanks to 2019 conference chairs Ben Goldman and Kate Hutchens, session chair Melissa Hubbard, and outgoing RBMS chair Shannon Supple. The talk draws together some of my past writings, all of which are linked to and ..read more

[This is a cleaned-up version of the text from which I spoke at the 2019 conference of Research Libraries UK, held at the Wellcome Collection in London last week. I’d like to thank my wonderful hosts for an opportunity to reflect on my time at DLF. As I said to the crowd, I hope the talk offers some useful—or at least productively vexing—ideas.] At a meeting in which the status of libraries as “neutral spaces” has been asserted and lauded, I feel obligated to confess: I’m not a believer in dispassionate and disinterested neutrality—not for human beings nor for the institutions that we con ..read more

I took a chance on a hackberry bowl at a farmer’s market—blue-stained and turned like a drop of water. It’s a good name for it. He had hacked it down at the bottom of his garden. (They’re filling in the timber where the oaks aren’t coming back.) But the craftsman had never worked that kind of wood before, kiln-dried at steamy summer’s height. “Will it split?” It did. Now it’s winter, and I make kintsukuroi, a golden repair. I found the wax conservators use on gilded picture-frames, and had some mailed from London. It softens in the heat of hands. Go on. Let the dry air crack you open ..read more

[What follows is the text of a talk I gave in two different contexts last week, as “Reconstitute the World: Machine-Reading Archives of Mass Extinction.” First, I opened the summer lecture series at the University of Virginia’s Rare Book School, where I’m privileged to be a faculty member and supporter. Next, I closed the first week of the 2018 Digital Humanities Summer Institute (DHSI) at the University of Victoria and opened a Digital Library Federation (DLF) unconference on social justice and digital libraries, DLFxDHSI. I started my UVic talk by noting that we met on the unceded, tradition ..read more