@amandaelaan
Librarian. Middle manager. DH, data, scholarly communication, open research, leadership, management. On the tenure track. Views and opinions my own. Here for #LibrarySky , but coffee and gaming keeps me going. (she/her)
The absolute high pitched shrieking noises you hear coming from people who do data management is the NIH dropping a new template on us that goes into effect in 90 days and tosses out work that we've been doing and advocating for since about 2019.
In case you wondered how my afternoon was going.
This looks fantastic! Such a great lineup of contributors. Definitely looking forward to reading this.
Thirded! If for some reason @kcommons.bsky.social doesn't work for you, you can use OSF. I'm also very interested in reading those pieces, so I hope you will share when ready!
Generative AI is antithetical to the core values of librarianship and not grappling with that is a big issue, not just for librarians, but for anyone in the education field.
Happy Love Data Week!
My webinar today was about the Data Departure Checklist authors.library.caltech.edu/records/kynw... that @kbriney.bsky.social and I created. It's a customizable word document to help you offload remembering what all you need to get back from a research team colleague📚
Sometimes loving a part of your job too much can really become a trap. A trap for overwork. A trap to keep you from setting boundaries. Because a manager doesn't have to make time or prioritize work if you're willing to do it on your own personal time. Anyway, more on Tuesday!
It would be difficult to overstate the influence of Fobazi Ettarh's work on a generation of library workers. Sending love to all in her orbit.
Join me in supporting her family in this difficult time.
www.gofundme.com/f/support-fo...
I'd watch a muppet show movie where the muppets infiltrate an academic conference.
I developed a new workshop, "Accessible Data for Everyone," for Love Data Week 2026. It's about making data accessible to people with disabilities.
Anyone is welcome to sign up. The class is on Feb 10 at 2pm PST online. Register here: libcal.caltech.edu/event/16205574
I've put together a list of the most helpful activities/visualizations/tools I've found for introducing students to the mechanics of LLMs (which I do every year). miriamposner.com/blog/introdu...
I think about universities here too: what would it be like to empower staff on the ground, to give them resources and support to escalate and advocate for bigger action where needed but also... sometimes just fix the damn bike entrance with the tools and skills they have without any fuss or hassle?
Do you have a vision for changing higher education in proactive ways, rather than reactive ones? Do you want to shift the systems that shape the experience of faculty, staff, and students? Consider applying to the 2026 Values-Enacted Leadership Institute: humetricshss.org/veli/
We've been hard at work on this, but need your input to ensure we're on the right track! If you're an academic librarian, please take a moment to fill out the feedback forms if you can.
One thing I keep asking is: have universities' promotion standards adjusted to the increasingly difficult realities of academic publishing?
Is it even realistic for fields to require a book for tenure?
Way too much press coverage of "AI" is spent debating the hypemerchants' claims of speed & efficiency & scale of impact, & not nearly enough is time spent on 2 very basic questions:
Are these systems outputs anything like correct? And, if & when they get things wrong, how much harm will that cause?
and real management means saying to your team, you will not overwork yourself to provide services in order to compensate for fewer staff -- and protecting them from any pushback
Real leadership in libraries means looking your community - including your boss's boss - in the face and saying to them that fewer staff means less services.
There is no way around it. That's the truth of the matter.
The community is either okay with that or not.
Been playing too much Mass Effect lately.
#PixelArt #pixelorama #masseffect
Thank you!! Let me know if you have any questions!
😍 I'm so happy to hear that! If you have any questions, please let me know!
My book chapter, Don't Do More With Less: Sustainable Work as a Management Value, has arrived! This chapter explores my first years as a manager and how I did my best to embrace slow librarianship, push back on overcommitment and vocational awe, and make my department and its work sustainable. 📚📜
I love seeing labor recognized! Reading up on @investinopen.bsky.social's project:
"We must invest in the people who do this work and who teach others, recognizing the value of human contributions in a funding and research landscape that can sometimes prioritize tool and technology development."
A teal and blue book titled Making Values-Based Decisions in the Academic Library
It's wonderful to be able to actually hold this in my hands! Thanks to @atureen.bsky.social and all our many amazing authors for making this a reality. And just in time to show off in my tenure meeting too 🙂
We’re at an inflection point in higher ed: decades of neoliberal policy weakened our ability to fight the current onslaught of eroding academic freedom, the dismantling of shared gov, the adjunctification of the professoriate+
It's here, and earlier than I expected! My first book, Making Values-Based Decisions in the Academic Library, co-edited with the fantastic @atureen.bsky.social, starts shipping next week! It's been a journey, but I'm so happy to see it come to life. 📚📜
Slide: There are no shortcuts--'ugly social realities' Fear of being left out a fabricated & marketing public relations rhetoric Evidence, rigorous testing and evaluation AI in education = commercialization of a collective responsibility Outsourcing a social, civic, and democratic process of cultivating the coming generation to commercial and capitalist enterprise whose priority is profit
Mic drop from @abeba.bsky.social at UNESCO Digital Learning Week
I've noticed a trend in requests for tenure reviews, asking letter writers to compare candidates to other "top" scholars at the same career stage. Can we please not do this?!?
Making tenure a moving and competitive target risks ratcheting up increasingly untenable expectations for productivity.
Interestingly, one of the institutions I profile in my book is able to give faculty raises every year, and the president attributed it to two factors: 1) control of administrator salaries and 2) control of salary differences between faculty in different disciplines.
Ever since Knowledge Justice's release, I've noticed that a lot of people seem unclear that CRT analysis can impact what day-to-day library work looks/feels like. This is what it looks like when @mariayakira.bsky.social, April Hathcock, and I apply CRT to our work together. #scholcomm #critlib
