A lot of libraries depend on IMLS grants! If they go away we will lose librarians and libraries may close, or at least significantly decrease their services. This will affect funding for technology classes, free resources for the blind, summer reading, databases, free internet access assistance, and interlibrary loans among other things. As the administration also targets social security, immigration, and other safety nets, libraries are attempting to fill the gap for the public, and things will get much harder without reliable funding.

This is also IN ADDITION to the administration calling book bans "fake" and some states attempting to pass laws to criminalize librarians, with fears in the library world that they will also try to make it a federal crime to promote or otherwise provide access to "inappropriate materials" which have included books that promote "gender ideology" or basically any character that isn't a white hetero cis man. That is one of the cornerstones of Project 2025. This IMLS takeover will only make things worse, and make it harder for people to access information.

Personally, we have been told by our director to be very careful and not talk about this while at work because of fears of retaliation, we have had several calls from the public to remove books with gay characters (we didn't), and as an adult services librarian, I am already seeing an impact on databases I help the public use. Medline Plus, the only free and easy-to-use medical encyclopedia for the public I have been able to find, is a US government website and already has warnings above certain pages about the "harms of gender ideology". This warning can be seen above pages on health disparities and abortion.

If you're so inclined and live in the US, the ALA put together a portal that makes it easy to email your reps with a script. You can find the portal here. I would also recommend investing in your local library, post on social media what services you use, sign up for a library card and see how many resources you can access for free. Many state library associations collect user stories of libraries so they can show their stakeholders they matter. Like my library, it is likely that staff have been warned not to discuss this at work because of fears of retaliation, so try not to talk to librarians about this at work.

General advocacy page:

Article from NPR about the takeover:

What happens if IMLS goes away:

A report on how much museums give back to the US economy:

An interactive map of what IMLS funds in the US:

hmm.. i think it depends on what you're looking for? the Corpus Vasorum Online is very extensive (and closely affiliated with the beazley archive), but the scope of the project was scaled back pretty early on to focus on only "decorated greek & etruscan pottery" (although some earlier/later wares made it into publications depending on collections). classical studies & ancient mediterranean archaeology is admittedly very behind as a field, both in terms of published research and digitized archives. both of these issues mostly boil down to funding, public interest, and institutional support, although i think sometimes it's also just the internal urge to be a luddite. when it comes to ancient pottery, beazley & the CVA are both cited super often because the alternatives are mostly just slogging through excavation records and archaeological archives. so on that note, here are several archaeological archives!

general databases:

arachne (the object database ran by the german archaeological institute) might be a good place to start, since it's a more general archive. i've used this one before for fieldwork, it's pretty extensive.

the french school at athens also runs their own digital archive. i have not really used it but it seems similar to the german one in terms of scope/mission.

for roman pottery, potsherd may be a good starting point? i'm not a big rome guy, so if there are any better roman pot alternatives someone please feel free to add them in the notes.

the greek ministry of culture also has a digital collection, which might be helpful? but i haven't used it much.

the french & british schools at athens jointly run this database of excavation reports from greece and cyprus, which could be useful if you're looking for cypriot pottery in particular. haven't used it much but again, could be useful.

if you're looking at a specific site, some archaeological excavations are also very good with digitizing their published materials, including pottery/ceramics:

the athenian agora excavations have regularly published their excavation data and digitized the majority of it (including pottery). a very thorough and easily searchable archive. they also have a free app?? its called "agora notebooks" on the app store. so if you want to have the agora database on your phone, there's your plug.

the sardis excavations has a beautiful showstopping stunning archive that is easily searched and has much amazing lydian pottery. such as this duck vase.

pompeii has a database (if you're focused on roman pottery), it's kinda weird to navigate but it has a specific search function so you can find, like, a skyphos for example if you look up "skyphos."

mycenae: cambridge has digitized some of the records from the british excavations at mycenae, including pottery & other small finds.

At our latest YA staff meeting, we discussed resources for teens looking for information and support with colleges and careers. Here were some of the great resources that were shared during and after this meeting!

New York Public Library College & Career Pathways

BigFuture

Appily College Planning for Every Path

CUNY ASAP helps students stay on track and graduate by providing financial, academic, and personal support.

CUNY Apprenticeship Program

Learn a Trade at SUNY

US Department of Education College Scorecard

The Door (Support for NYC Youth)

Resources available with a New York Public Library Card:

Peterson's Test & Career Prep

Brainfuse HelpNow

Brainfuse JobNow

LearningExpress Library

LinkedIn Learning

FUCK MICROSOFT AND THEIR OFFICE 365

yesterday i spent the day looking through a database of 325 flagged NPASS compounds, took a representative scaffold of 34, and did deep research. most were exactly what they claimed to be.

but four of them were lying: synthetic chloro-nitro-hydrazone, a cefdinir intermediate, a peracetylated soyasaponin, a sulfur heterocycle. all of them wandered in from pharmaceutical manufacturing. you could only find them if you look.

@baja-blasted @terephin (please ignore the crabs)

//So the software I'm using to keep track of my books, lore bits, etc. is called Seatable! It wasn't my first choice for this project, I'm more familiar with Airtable (I've used it professionally), but Airtable's free plan doesn't let you color-code :c

//Seatable is a website that looks a lot like google sheets, but instead of building a spreadsheet, you're building a database. I knew I wanted a database rather than a spreadsheet for my card catalogue because it became pretty apparent early on that a spreadsheet would mean a lot of duplicate entries and be a lot more work to maintain, as well as monumentally more work if I wanted to use it for reference.

//My database isn't finished, and so I'm not really comfortable making it public, but I'm happy to walk through some of the things that I like most about it, that made me choose to make a database rather than a spreadsheet.