I’ve had the British Library strike in my mind recently, and then I saw a Social Media Assistant job come up at the University of Cambridge that is only about £900 above minimum wage. What -

what are we doing here.

I have always thought the priority for investment should be staff. I’ve continued thinking this even when I see the financial constraints and ambitions of senior leadership. Slightly more controversially, I don’t think insitutions should hire more people until they pay their own staff an appropriate wage or can offer one to new hires.

The British Library is just one institution in a sector full of them that’s come to breaking point, they just have a strong enough union to do something about it.

Content of this week

• I think I’ve seen a couple libraries rank their trollies, and the British Library has done a good one.

• Why does this deep dive into archival/library digitisation work so well? I think it’s that sweet spot in the Venn diagram between deep knowledge and style - putting comedy in the script, having a good speaker and sight gags.

• I thought this trend had been played out but here’s the Mary Rose getting 127k Likes in the year of our lord 2025.

• There’s got to be a way to adapt this bit to your org.

• Ditto this Skyrim bit. Imagine hovering over an exhibition label and increasing your Intelligence, or your vitality in the cafe, or your sense of sonder in the British Museum great court.

• Is it too soon to make this joke?

The bullet point bit

• This isn’t super related to content but I was glad/sad to see this article in City AM asking why people don’t seem to have noticed or cared about their cyberattack.

• Rachel Karten’s done a very good post with very good illustrations digging into why grid posts don’t seem to get any engagement any more. I’m doing a talk today making the same point but not as well: the shift to FYP and the social graph algorithm means that even when people follow you they probably won’t see your content unless it’s Good.

• That’s pretty much it. Except even Google’s CEO is saying we might be in an AI bubble, a US court has ruled Meta doesn’t hold a monopoly (lol), and in 6 days they’ll be doing the TikTok Awards if you want to browse the crème de la crème of content creators.

Personal stuff I do for me and you can just skip this if you like

🎮📖 what I’m consuming as a consumer

I’m not going to lie I’m still racking up the hours in Europa Universalis 5, this time creating the Ottoman Empire and realising that discovering gunpowder is probably actually quite a good idea before attacking the Kingdom of Hungary.

Their system of discovering technologies is actually quite interesting (honestly). The game is split into five Ages: Traditions, Renaissance, Discovery, Reformation, Absolutism, and Revolutions. It’s obviously quite Euro-centric but each of those have three distinct major discoveries (such as The New World, Pike & Shot, Meritocracy etc.) which start in one place then spread through trade and conquest - meaning if you’re isolated from those discoveries you rapidly fall behind and wake up one day to a Perry Expedition.

🐕 Keith

Here he is