Rats in Stacks is a monthly (ish) newsletter for library and information professionals that shares free and low cost events and resources. Enter your email address below to subscribe. You'll also need to confirm your subscription by clicking the link in the confirmation email you receive (check your spam for this!).
Rats in Stacks Issue #15 - December 2025
IntroWelcome back to the long awaited return of Rats in Stacks! Call it a Yuletide miracle or just me finally finding the will, but we’re back to some regularly scheduled programming (please ignore if you receive this email at 9pm). In more good news, the poll I ran roughly a thousand years ago has revealed that the rat of Rats in Stacks’ name is: RatGPT! (The GPT stands for Grate (more) Parmesan, Thanks). More resource than event heavy this issue, but that’s probably for the best in this bleak December, right? Cosy up, read some of the eclectic mix of articles below, and have a hopefully peaceful end to 2025. EventsFree workshop introducing the EDIB Self-Assessment Toolkit developed by Archives West Midland. ResourcesCILIP - Training - Future Library Leader CILIP’s “new skills for the future library leader” training is available for free for public library workers in England. Article about what scholarly publishers could learn from famed fanfiction repository Archive of Our Own (I may be biased in sharing this as I wrote my dissertation on the cataloguing of fanfiction). Fair Library Jobs - Article - Pay and Grey Areas by Kirsten Elliott Important article from FLJ how they assess badly paid jobs and the complexities of the issue. Really interesting zine on the inevitability (or not) of algorithms and the role librarians can play. “This scoping review critically examines how fatness and fat people are represented – and often misrepresented – within archival collections.” BursariesCILIP Metadata and Discover Group Conference - 11th-13th March 2026 Full bursary for the conference and up to £500 towards accommodation and travel. Open to current library students, recent graduates, new professionals (less than 5 years experience), and/or those without the financial means to cover the cost of the conference. Deadline is 2nd February 2026 - plenty of time! MiscNot free, but there’s 50% Facet books until 17th December with code DEC50, so now’s a good time to add something to your Christmas list. Thank you for reading! If you have any suggestions for the next issue, feel free to email me on rowan@ratsinstacks.co.uk or contact me on Bluesky @scatterbones.bsky.social. You can read this and past issues at ratsinstacks.co.uk. |
Rats in Stacks
Rats in Stacks is a monthly (ish) newsletter for library and information professionals that shares free and low cost events and resources. Enter your email address below to subscribe. You'll also need to confirm your subscription by clicking the link in the confirmation email you receive (check your spam for this!).