Believe it or not, there was a period in the distant past when Tumblr was a robust place for special collections social media ( @npub1znsa...263t was a particular pioneer of that) and the site itself worked to promote our content. Now every few months brings another account I follow deactivating. https://othmeralia.tumblr.com/post/761785491835224064/hey-everyone-othmeralia-is-going-to-go-on-a

The Treasures of the NYPL exhibition spans from dollhouse miniatures to Durer’s triumphal arch.

Different social media platforms have different affordances. For instance, you need Tumblr to tell you that the illustration in your medieval manuscript is a Pokemon. https://upennmanuscripts.tumblr.com/post/761243109528125440/youre-not-wrong

The first image of what would become known as a tardigrade was published in 1773 by a German pastor, Johann August Ephraim Goeze, who called them kleiner Wasserbär, “little water bears”.

The Public Domain Review

Among the Moss Piglets: The First Image of a Tardigrade (1773)

The very first drawing of the microscopic "water bear" by a theologian turned microscope explorer.

It is so important to understand preservation as an active process, not a passive one. Even for the materials in my period, preservation means keeping the AC running, patching the leaks, squashing the bugs—it all starts to decay as soon as you let those systems lapse. And we’ve spent the last 150 years finding ever more fragile, demanding ways to store our culture.

The Library of Congress has digitized a collection of 1920s stereographs ranging from racy to comic to… other? https://www.loc.gov/pictures/search/?va=exact&sp=1&q=Exhibit+Supply+Company+%28Chicago%2C+Ill.%29&fa=displayed%3Aanywhere&fi=author&sg=true&op=EQUAL

Death Comes for the Archivist

Oof, I clicked on this almost immediately but it had already sold--a Book of Common Prayer in which an American has crossed out references to "Parliament" and "King" and written in "Congress" and "Constitution".

Boston Rare Maps

The Book of Common Prayer, with patriotic alterations by a prominent North Carolinian

A fantastic relic of the early Republic, being a Book of Common Prayer with patriotic excisions and additions by a North Carolinian merchant, likel...

I have a meeting tomorrow with a professor about selecting items for her class on the Moon. Unrelatedly, I was down in the stacks looking for something else and stumbled upon a rare and important 17th century map of the Moon that is *completely uncataloged*. This is the closest I’ve ever felt to having a superpower.

IT has been called in to examine the malfunctioning computer that runs our microfilm reader and rendered an official diagnosis of "It's toast."