As many posts on this blog can attest, I am generally very pro-bot. Bots needn’t produce spam and influence campaigns; instead, they can provide useful or amusing content in many contexts. I have long wanted to make a Microsoft Teams bot in the spirit of Zoia, the Code4Lib IRC bot. In its day, Zoia was… Continue reading Teams bot
LLM malaise
You may have seen my previous posts about my initial attempts to code with LLMs. At the time, they seemed promising. But in the past few months, my mood has shifted over into a sort of depression. Below are a few of my complaints. [1] Using LLMs takes a significant amount of the fun out… Continue reading LLM malaise
Manifold
Our new journal, Humanities Methods in Librarianship, is now on Manifold. We invite you check out the new site and let us know what you think! Manifold is an open source web platform for journals and other publishing projects that is developed by a team based at CUNY, the University of Minnesota Press, and Cast… Continue reading Manifold
Humanities Methods in Librarianship: Call for peer reviewers
Here is a call for peer reviewers for Humanities Methods in Librarianship (where I am on the editorial board) that I hope will be of interest to you. Please consider signing up as a peer reviewer, and feel free to share with your networks! Humanities Methods in Librarianship – a new, no-fee, open access journal… Continue reading Humanities Methods in Librarianship: Call for peer reviewers
Two papers
In the past couple of weeks, I’ve published two papers. I just wanted to plug them briefly here: “From Weberian Rationalization to JavaScript Components: Modularism in Academic Library Software” was published today in Information Technology and Libraries, and discusses the pervasiveness of modular approaches from the social sciences to library software. It is where Max… Continue reading Two papers
Grind
Every summer, I set myself a deadline: I have to finish and submit a paper before school resumes in the fall. This push in the summer is absolutely necessary because it is an unbeatable opportunity: it is so much quieter at the library than during the rest of the academic year. I know that once… Continue reading Grind
This is now a Chicago Manual of Style stan blog
The Chicago Manual of Style never ceases to delight me. Besides being an exceptional style guide by any standard, the deep love of detail that goes into the guide is remarkable. The authors’ passion for particulars positively radiates from all of the pages. It is enchanting. The visual design of the books is also impeccable.… Continue reading This is now a Chicago Manual of Style stan blog
Further into tildegit
A couple of years ago, I posted about how I was mirroring some GitHub repositories on tildegit. Since then, GitHub has continued to deteriorate, with problems such as: feature bloat, over-engineering, slow response times when loading content, real ID verification for some features. So now I’m moving further into tildegit. I’ve started a couple of… Continue reading Further into tildegit
Web accessibility: a self-auditing approach
While my previous post was about how LLMs can supplement web accessibility work, they certainly do not match a thorough, human audit of web code and content. Real human eyes on the problem are often effective at diagnosing many of the most common pitfalls. Our library is working on such an audit. A small sub-committee… Continue reading Web accessibility: a self-auditing approach
Web accessibility: a supplementary approach
You may have heard about the requirement in the U.S. for most state and local governments’ web content to be WCAG 2.1 AA compliant by April 26th. This is a big lift, and our librarians have already been fretting about it for months now. But as I go about poking at Aider and o3, I… Continue reading Web accessibility: a supplementary approach
