Ruth Kitchin Tillman

This post is part of a series in which I write about experiences or specific challenges from my day-to-day work.

This post is the first in a series in which I write about experiences or specific challenges from my day-to-day work.

Even though powerlifting has been a significant part of my hobby life for the past three years, I hadn’t yet managed to write about it on here.

I’d had this post in my head off and on since I was reviewing last year’s planners in January, but a conversation on Mastodon sparked me to actually write it.

This is not an OpenRefine tutorial.

OpenRefine has an API.

I’m currently working on a project which involves a lot of spreadsheets exported from our ILS using the same process.

This is the first in what will be a series of posts deriving from my most recent use of OpenRefine.

Just in the past week, the following post crossed my mastodon timeline: I have spent several hours writing feedback on this paper, and now I am looking at the references and … none of them exist.

FFmpeg was always one of those things I wanted to learn.

I’m at the point in my life as a computer user where I can still get excited about a new tool, but I’m hesitant to write about it until I’ve been using it for at least a year.

With Regine Heberlein Authors Accepted Manuscript

Years created: 2024-2025 Piecing technique: machine Quilting technique: hand Summary: This cat quilt was made for a good friend.

Two years ago, my colleague Stephen Woods approached me about collaborating on an article1 extending research he’d already performed about serials use in doctoral sociology work.

Years created: 2016-2017 Piecing technique: machine Quilting technique: machine Summary: This was my first machine-quilted quilt, using the walking-foot method.

Years created: 2019 Piecing technique: machine Quilting technique: hand Summary: A bonus quilt which accompanies the trio of quilts which I made for triplets born in 2019.

Years created: 2019 Piecing technique: machine Quilting technique: hand Summary: One of three quilts I made for triplets born in 2019.

Years created: 2019 Piecing technique: machine Quilting technique: hand Summary: One of three quilts I made for triplets born in 2019.

Years created: 2019 Piecing technique: machine Quilting technique: hand Summary: One of three quilts I made for triplets born in 2019.

This one’s mostly administrivia, but possibly of interest for those of you who only want a subset of what I post here.

I’ve been a licensed ham operator since December 2020 and active in my local ham radio club since Spring 2021.

Years created: 2025 Piecing technique: machine Quilting technique: machine Summary: The lyrics of Rage Against the Machine's 1996 "Bulls on Parade" have been in my head quite a bit as I've watched budgets and bombs over the last couple years.

author’s photograph of the land grant mural in Penn State’s Old Main With the recent (and I believe deeply misguided) decision by the university’s administration to close 7 of our Commonwealth campuses, I’ve seen a lot more recent references to the land g…

Early this spring, Ex Libris released the Summon “Research Assistant.”

Years created: 2020 Piecing technique: machine Quilting technique: machine Summary: Another mini quilt from in 2020.

My coworkers don’t want AI.

With Stephen Woods Supporting other research by Stephen Woods about citation practices in sociology dissertations.

Today mom would’ve turned 80 years old.

Years created: 2017-2018 Piecing technique: machine Quilting technique: hand Summary: I don't have a name for this quilt, but the base block is one I'd call "Big Goose, Little Goose" (there may be a name I'm blanking on).

Years created: 20??

Earlier this month, Jessy at Library Shenanigans posted some charming onomatopetic instructions for circ workers performing checkins at a freshly-automated library in the 1990s.

Years created: 2017 Piecing technique: machine Quilting technique: machine Summary: I made this trip around the world quilt to celebrate my 10th wedding anniversary.

As should be evident from the title/summary, this post comes with a major content warning for discussion of suicidal ideation.

With Gala Campos Oaxaca

Years created: 2008-2011?

Years created: March 2020 Piecing technique: machine Quilting technique: hand Summary: I made a lot of mini quilts in the early days of the 2020 lockdown.

I manage this site and several of my others using Hugo, a static site generator based on the “Go” language.

Years created: 2021-2022 Piecing technique: machine Quilting technique: hand Summary: This was my first Mariner's Compass quilt.

For years, I’ve thought “I should really put pictures of my quilts online.”

Years created: 2024-2025 Piecing technique: machine Quilting technique: hand Summary: I created "Winter Diamonds" templates based on other quilts I'd seen.

Author’s note: This talk is even better paired with my VALA 2024 talk: The Interdependent Library System.

Something bad has happened and it is once again time to make a statement.

UPDATE: Only a few months after I wrote this, I opened Apple Health and suddenly saw a much higher number by my workout.

January 21, 2025 marks the 500th anniversary of the small gathering of Christians who chose to re-baptise each other, setting off what would become the Anabaptist movement.

After last week’s talk on making use of the period between now and fundamental shifts in cataloging, regular expressions (regex) came up during the Q&A as one of the things I think it’s helpful for catalogers to learn.

full copy of my slides with speaker text as annotations Good afternoon, everyone.

Updated April 22, 2025 to note that this week several of us noticed that now WorldCat.org is also forcing people to login with a WorldCat account to see the “All Libraries” list This piece was originally intended for submission to one of several academic/…

This post continues a series on MARC Misconceptions, exploring the mismatch between what we want from our data and how we’ve designed it.

I’ve been thinking about this series for a while: MARC Misconceptions or, really, the mismatch between data and desire.

Author’s note: This talk is followed by my Code4Lib 2025 talk: Scaffolding Possibility: Systems, Stress, and Small Acts of Care.