John Mark Ockerbloom

"Why is my subject search for 'Gender expression' turning up so many titles on aerodynamics?" I was wondering just now, until I realized the most likely explanation was some catalog update process had done a pattern search-and-replace on "Drag" as a subject without checking the results.

(Seen in a HathiTrust subject search. Most likely not their fault, as they take records from partner libraries pretty much as they get them.)

A number of pages and sites removed recently from .gov sites now have archives viewable at govarchive.us - just substitute "govarchive.us" for "gov" in the URL that doesn't seem to work any more, and see what you find! https://govarchive.us/ #c4l26

"In the course of my life I have developed five little democratic questions. If one meets a powerful person... ask them five questions:
'What power have you got?
Where did you get it from?
In whose interests do you exercise it?
To whom are you accountable?
And how can we get rid of you?'

If you cannot get rid of the people who govern you, you do not live in a democratic system."

-- from Tony Benn's last speech in the UK House of Commons, 2001. Full text: https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200001/cmhansrd/vo010322/debtext/10322-13.htm

The most assigned #OpenAccess textbooks in physics, according to Open Syllabus, are overwhelmingly in particle and high-energy physics. That's thanks to SCOAP3, which started out converting journals in those disciplines to open access, and has now also set its sights on making key textbooks and monographs open access as well. It's a model I hope many other disciplines will emulate.

They've now made over 100 books OA, and plan to add 10-15 more per year. Current list: https://scoap3.org/scoap3-books/

Since various public figures have brought it up, here's a summary of the "just war" doctrine, from the Catechism of the Catholic Church: https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P81.HTM

This is best understood as a *minimum* Catholic standard for entering into and conducting warfare. As a few sections (e.g. 2306, 2311) imply, there's also a substantial tradition in the Church for renouncing violence entirely.

Pope Leo's recent remarks reflect the "rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy" the Catechism insists upon.

"The power with which Christ rose is entirely nonviolent...It is even more like that of a human heart which, wounded by an offense, rejects the instinct for revenge and, filled with compassion, prays for the one who has committed the offense.... On this day of celebration, let us abandon every desire for conflict, domination, and power."

Pope Leo's Ubi et Orbi address for #Easter, in which he also calls for a prayer vigil for peace this coming Saturday: https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/messages/urbi/documents/20260405-urbi-et-orbi-pasqua.html

I'd thought I'd need to wait a few years more to welcome Mary Poppins into the (US) public domain. But even though the book _Mary Poppins_ came out in 1934, early versions of some of its chapters appeared years before in New Zealand. One story, "Mary Poppins and the Match-Man", tells of her date in a chalk drawing that later became the basis of the memorable "jolly 'oliday" sequence in the Disney adaptation. You can now read it as it ran in the Christchurch Sun in 1926: https://lostchristchurch.wordpress.com/2016/12/14/was-christchurch-the-birthplace-of-mary-poppins/

Daniel Hunter has a great piece at Waging Nonviolence on the multiyear work of organizers, journalists, and campaigners in Hungary that managed to oust Viktor Orbán after 16 years, despite his messing with elections and civil society in many of the ways Trump's tried: https://wagingnonviolence.org/2026/04/lessons-from-playbook-defeated-viktor-orban-hungary/

It's worth reading not just for seeing what worked, but also for what was insufficient (noting, e.g., how Mugabe hung onto power in Zimbabwe), and for the work still needed to keep autocracy from returning.

The British Library's Electronic Legal Deposits came back online this month, 30 months after a cyberattack took down most of the British Museum's online systems. These are materials deposited for copyright that can only be viewed on the British Library premises. More details: https://www.bl.uk/stories/news/electronic-legal-deposit-material-available

Some other digital collections the British Library hosted before the attack remain unavailable, including some of their digital Treasures collections like Shakespeare in Quarto.

"We agree with the District Court that UpCodes is likely to succeed on the merits of its fair use defense. Thus, we will affirm the denial of the preliminary injunction."

Third Circuit appeals court rules against ASTM's petition for an injunction against UpCodes for posting standards that have been incorporated into law. Opinion: https://www2.ca3.uscourts.gov/opinarch/242965p.pdf. Analysis from ARL: https://www.arl.org/blog/court-rules-in-favor-of-public-access-to-information/. #copyright #law #standards

Annoyed that descriptions of obscure books I'm finding online are increasingly unreliable slop (and not necessarily 100% AI-generated slop either).

I looked online for information on a 1930s detective story someone asked for and found descriptions like this:

"Set in a small quiet town, this book explores the hidden secrets and dark pasts that lie beneath the surface of seemingly ordinary lives." (No, it opens in a bustling newsroom in New York City.) 1/2

Along with today's big top-secret-carelessness expose, the Atlantic also just published Aziz Huq's article on Ernst Fraenkel's 1941 book _The Dual State_, about how 1930s Nazi Germany maintained business as usual for most Germans, while "establishing a domain of lawlessness and state violence" for targets of its ethno-nationalism: https://www.law.uchicago.edu/news/aziz-huq-writes-about-ernst-fraenkels-dual-state

I checked, and verified that Fraenkel's copyright was never renewed. I'll list the Internet Archive's open copy today: https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.13142

Well, that's a new one. I think I found a phantom magazine title: one that was never used on a published issue, but may have been created by accident by a stressed cataloger.

The magazine in question went through a dizzying set of title changes and mergers over 7 years. For a little under a year it used a title similar to the phantom title, ending with one slightly different word-- "Advance" rather than "Advocate". The cataloger seems to have applied the phantom title to the full 7-year run...

The Hugo finalist list for 2026 is out: https://www.thehugoawards.org/hugo-history/2026-hugo-awards/.

I've already read 3 of the Best Novel finalists in this year's batch (which has some overlap with the Nebula's finalist list), and I'll probably pick up most of the others. (I've found the Hugo list a good way to find new-to-me authors and books I'm likely to enjoy.)

Novelist finalists can be found in many libraries. Many of the shorter fiction finalists are freely available online before final Hugo voting. #Books #SF #library

"[T}he cancellation of an entire issue of an academic journal, which has not been previously reported, is a remarkable new development in a mounting list of examples of censorship of pro-Palestinian speech." The Guardian on the cancellation of a Palestine-themed issue of the Harvard Educational Review: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2025/jul/22/harvard-educational-review-palestine-issue-cancelled