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📢 Introducing The JSTOR Collective!

We’re thrilled to announce our new Tumblr community: The JSTOR Collective! 🎉

This is a space where faculty, librarians, students, researchers, and lifelong learners can come together to share ideas, spark conversations, and, yes, even post academic memes. 😉

Whether you’re deep in research, looking for study tips, or just want to connect with others passionate about knowledge, this is the place for you.

�� What you’ll find:

Meaningful discussions and resources

A welcoming, inclusive space for all

Humor, curiosity, and plenty of memes

Join The JSTOR Collective and help us build a vibrant, self-sustaining community that celebrates the joy of learning.

Let’s connect, collaborate, and grow—together. 🌱

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We are honored and grateful for the recognition of our digital resource, “Classic Cases: Historical Foundations of First-Year Law School Cases,” by the Academic Law Libraries Special Interest Section (ALL-SIS). The site received the 2025 Digital Publication Award for its significant contribution to legal literature that is born and remains digital.

A huge thank you to everyone who contributed to preparing the project! The digital site was supervised by Michael Hannon ’98, associate director for access services & digital initiatives, and Ryan Greenwood, curator of rare book and special collections, with the invaluable assistance of law students Rachel Canoun ’24, Mason Medeiros ’22, Loren Olson ’26, Alec Shaw ’19, and Law Library colleagues Joy Brown, Digital Technologist, and Sophia Daley, Archives and Digital Collections Associate.

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Time is a Flat Circle, Y'all

Best laid plans and all, I sort of... haven't existed for a long while. Hoping to change that this month as I work on a VERY scribal commission of a leatherbound tome. Should have multiple posts on materials and process as I go, providing my singular braincell sticks around.

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Oops, all hyperfocus and no posting…

Hopefully, I will have a few process photos of turning this wood into a living spine box for a book to be gifted~ stay tuned for more?

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And a few more adventures into the craft of bookbinding…

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Hmm, shall have to investigate…

We've just launched a new site focusing on material features in our early manuscripts, with tutorials on bindings, pages, content, and decoration, and links to digitized manuscripts with those features.

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Absolutely yes. Treat yourself to an armful of books just because you want to! Because the covers looked pretty! Because you saw a little kid dragging their parent over to that shelf! Get them and let them sit, library books need field trip outings for enrichment.

Let. yourself. have. books. Even if you don't get around to reading them. Even if you get a chapter in before life takes over again. Even if you forget them until you get a late notice.

Give yourself the permission to read, regardless of what it is - a cookbook, a comic book, the latest fiction thriller, an ebook, an audiobook - because you never know what little cracks and chips of loneliness hiding in your soul need to be soothed by words.

unsung benefit i think a lot of ppl are sleeping on with using the public library is that i think its a great replacement for the dopamine hit some ppl get from online shopping. it kind of fills that niche of reserving something that you then get to anticipate the arrival of and enjoy when it arrives, but without like, the waste and the money.

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Local scribe has been left to her own devices… and has started to make books.

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Ok I am going to do this simply because the first thing I will put here I NEED to do it and I have 0 motivation to do it even though it is EXTREMELY important

In fact, I think that's the reason why I don't want to do it... anyway

If this gets to 30 notes, I do that thing

50 notes, I call to ask if my doctor's appointment has been scheduled (I've been avoiding it for two weeks now)

100 notes, I go wash my shoes that have long needed washing and are just sitting there, existing, waiting for me to deign to wash them.

200 notes, I finish organizing my room (I organized it halfway and then left a bunch of things that still don't have a defined place)

500 notes, I use the things I have to bleach and color my hair. The only thing that has stopped me is the fear of doing it wrong or being too lazy to maintain it.

1k notes, I stop doing things that I know will trigger my chronic pain with the pure intention of confirming that the pain was indeed real (don't do this. 0 recommended).

5k notes, I try some new food without fear of wasting money by buying something I most likely won't like (my autism hates new foods)

10k notes, I wear my bi flag earrings in front of someone I wouldn't usually wear them with. I trust that they possibly wouldn't have a problem with me being bi, but I would never get up the courage to tell them anything

20k notes, wtf I have absolutely no idea. If it comes to this, ehhh... Honestly, I have no idea what I'm doing here. Do I promise to be honest in therapy and stop telling them that everything is perfect even though nothing has ever been perfect? Yeah, that probably works. Please don't go this far, I don't know how to do this. Maybe I should... but... it would be awful to learn it

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This is a friendly reminder to never, ever publish your book with a publishing company that charges you to publish with them. That is a vanity press, which makes money by preying on authors. They charge you for editing, formatting, cover art, and more. With most of these companies, you will never seen a cent of any royalties made from sale of your book. A legitimate publishing company only makes money when you make money, they will never charge you to publish with them. If a company approaches you and says "Hey, we'll publish your book, just pay us X amount of money," tell them to go fuck themself and block them.

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Part 3.1, playing around with potential seal designs…

And the final sealed envelope…

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Part two of my recent commission work, and the janky process of trying to settle on what scribal hand to use for ‘ancient pompous vampire prince’.

I eventually decided on long and unconnected N’s and M’s, and sometimes H’s.

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Part one of ‘what happens when my friends know I play ttrpgs and do calligraphy’, otherwise known as one of my favorite commission projects I’ve had to date.

What you can barely see under the glass desktop is a string of clearance LED lights wrapped under the support frame of the desk and diffused with a sheet of printer paper, effectively turning my entire desktop into a light board.

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Well, starting off, are we considering flight, or simply the idea of a dinosaur as a land mount? For a single knight, or multiple?

…I have entirely too many ideas for this, now, and a list of research questions.

@we-are-avenger d’you want to tackle the aquatic options, since I’m not as familiar?

Which dinosaurs would make for the best knightly mounts?

I'm not a dinosaur kid, so you'd probably be better off asking @we-are-avenger and @we-are-scribe who *are*, and can weigh in better than I.

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Break - Stalwart Defender

break: What would cause your OC to break down completely? What do they look like when that happens? Has anyone ever seen them at their lowest?

You’ve picked out a character I haven’t worked with much, and I appreciate that!

Stalwart defender - Faridun, a paladin of a judicial deity

Anything that threatens his sibling, honestly. Seeing them completely overwhelmed and him unable to do a thing about it.

Alternatively, being sent into a situation where there is no good or right answer, and every choice results in harm being done. For all he is a righteous paladin, he has a tender heart under his duties.

He has an immense capability to keep on moving, and doing, when his world is falling apart around him, but his smile disappears. His sense of humor goes with it, and he’s more often than not going to be found deep in prayer and contemplation during his downtime. When he breaks, he fully breaks down into sobbing, collapsed on his knees or in a chair.

Faridun has no issue with being seen as he fails to manage or handle emotions (a drastic change from quite a few other characters), though out of respect for those around him, he doesn’t actively try to be in public when it happens. He seeks out those he considers close friends for advice and support.

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Alright. This could get interesting… hit me

oc asks: not-so-nice edition

alone: How does your OC deal with loneliness? Have they ever been completely alone before? How do they act when there's no one around to see them?

betrayal: Has your OC ever been betrayed by someone they thought they could trust? Has your OC ever betrayed someone who trusted them?

bound: Has your OC ever been imprisoned or captured? What happened? How did they get out? Did the experience leave any scars?

break: What would cause your OC to break down completely? What do they look like when that happens? Has anyone ever seen them at their lowest?

desire: What's one thing your OC wants more than anything in the world? Are they open with that desire? Why or why not? What would they do to fulfill it?

failure: What's your OC's greatest failure? Have they been able to move past it? Does anyone else know about it?

fear: What is your OC's greatest fear? What do they do when confronted with it? Are they open with their fear, or do they hide it away?

future: What's the worst possible future for your OC? Are they taking steps to avoid that outcome? Are they even aware it's a possibility?

ghost: Who or what haunts your OC? What happened? How do they live with their ghosts?

guilt: What is your OC guilty about? How do they handle their guilt? Do they try to avoid guilt, or do they accept it?

hate: What does your OC hate? Why? How do they act towards the object of their hatred?

heartbreak: Have they ever had a relationship that ended badly? Experienced some other kind of heartbreak? What happened?

hide: What does your OC hide? Why do they hide it?

hunt: Who or what is your OC hunted by? A person, a feeling, a past mistake? Is your OC able to let their guard down, or are they constantly alert?

mask: Does your OC wear a mask, literally or figuratively? What goes on beneath it? Is there anyone in their life who gets to see who they are under the mask?

midnight: What keeps your OC up at night? Do they have nightmares? Fears? Anxieties? What do they do in the small hours of the morning when they should be sleeping?

mistake: What's the worst mistake your OC ever made? What led to them making it? Have they been able to fix it? How have they moved on?

monster: Is your OC monstrous in any way? Is there something that makes them monstrous? Are they aware of their own monstrosity? Do they accept it or reject it?

nightmare: What does your OC have nightmares about? How do they deal with their nightmares? Do they tell people, or keep it to themself?

pain: What's the worst pain your OC has ever felt? Do they have a high pain tolerance?

secret: What's one secret your OC never wants anyone to know about them?

skin: How comfortable is your OC in their skin? Do they grapple with anything that lives inside them—a beast, a curse, a failure, a monster? How do they face the smallest, weakest, most horrible version of themself? Are they able to acknowledge it at all?

torture: Has your OC ever been tortured? Would your OC ever torture someone else?

wound: How does your OC handle being wounded? Are their wounds mostly physical? Mental? Emotional? What's the worst wound your OC has ever experienced?