@ArabicElit: Electronic Literature in the Arab World is a new, open-access book by Reham Hosny, published by Bloomsbury. From the publisher’s website:

In this open access book, Reham Hosny delves into the idiosyncrasies of Arabic electronic literature (e-lit), examining its rich historical roots and contemporary evolution.

@arabicelitoffers a comprehensive exploration of Arabic electronic literature, tracing its lineage from 12th-century Arabic poetry to modern digital forms. Through an interdisciplinary lens that incorporates literary studies, digital humanities and critical theory, this book investigates how Arabic e-lit is shaped by its historical, cross-cultural and sociopolitical contexts.

The first chapter uncovers the classical precursors of e-lit, while subsequent chapters tackle the challenges and potential of this emerging field, including language barriers and the digital divide. A unique annotated bibliography serves as a resource for analysing Arabic e-lit, and a new classification framework is proposed to better understand its diverse forms. The book also adopts a cultural materialist perspective to explore the dynamics of Arabic social media texts and examines cross-cultural digital literary approaches by comparing Arabic and American e-lit works. Finally, the conclusion anticipates the future of Arabic e-lit in the age of artificial intelligence. This book is essential reading for scholars, students and enthusiasts of digital literature and Middle Eastern studies, offering fresh insights into a rapidly evolving literary landscape.

The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on www.bloomsburycollections.com.

Two organizations, Local Contexts and Creative Commons, have collaborated to create guidelines that “share commitments to equitable knowledge sharing, proper attribution, and respect for diverse cultural and community protocols,” in support of cultural heritage institutions that are creating access to data for Indigenous collections. These guidelines go beyond the usual protocols of copyright, priming museum, library, and archive workers to consider ethical and legal issues of open access to Indigenous cultural heritage. The new guidelines

“advance practical understanding among cultural heritage practitioners of how open heritage interplays with the protection of Indigenous rights over their heritage and data. Following a hands-on approach, the guidance unpacks the key issues underlying equitable access to and reuse of Indigenous cultural heritage and maps out the practical steps institutions can take when engaging with Indigenous communities… [and] clarifies how the CC licenses and tools and Local Contexts Labels can work together towards greater cultural equity, supporting communities in sharing on terms that reflect their cultural authority, and supporting respectful cultural exchanges and intercultural dialogue. In other words, it aligns open licensing tools with Indigenous data sovereignty frameworks.”

The guidelines themselves and a webinar explaining an overview are available on the Creative Commons webpage.

The FORBIN Dataset: A Collection of Historical Photographs with Archival Metadata describes a dataset derived from the archive of Victor Forbin, a Paris-based journalist and publisher whose agency circulated news photographs in the early twentieth century. Published in the Journal of Open Humanities Data by Mohamed Chelali (Université Paris Descartes), Sylvain-Karl Gosselet (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique), Florence Cloppet (Université Paris Cité), Camille Kurtz (Université Paris Cité), Isabelle Bloch (Sorbonne Université), and Daniel Foliard (Université Paris Cité), the article outlines the scope of the collection, the digitization process, and the structure of the resulting dataset. With more than 62,000 digitized photographs and associated archival metadata, the dataset may be of interest to readers working on photographic archives, metadata, digital collections, and computational approaches to historical image corpora.

From the paper abstract:

Early photography and the first massification of the medium at the turn of the 20th century is foundational to present day visual cultures. This is specifically true of the visual archives of the first generation of news picture agencies from the 1900s to the 1920s. The latest generation of artificial intelligence models provides the ability to analyse such photographs beyond their purely pictorial dimension, either by grouping them according to their semantic content or by generating textual descriptions. Cross-seeding approaches between historical epistemologies and computer vision expertise can unlock new perspectives on the computational analysis of large and poorly curated photographic archives to provide new insights on early photographic cultures. The automated detection of visual and textual contents, as well as the exploration of the transformation of continuous-tone photographs into halftone images, can help us understand the complexity and historical variability of systems and structures that created, stored and circulated news photographs. In this paper, we introduce the FORBIN dataset. A Paris-based journalist, Victor Forbin, created his own news picture agency. He bought original prints from around the world and then sold them to major French newspapers from the late 1900s to the 1930s. The FORBIN dataset is composed of 62,135 photographs where both the front and back sides are digitized. This paper includes information of the history of this collection, its digitization and its ensuing transformation into a dataset. The Forbin dataset can be used for various computer vision tasks, such as text recognition, image similarity analysis, caption generation, and metadata extraction.

A Knowledge Graph for Spanish American Notary Records presents a digital project aimed at improving access to seventeenth-century Spanish American notary records using deep learning and knowledge management technologies. Based on digitized manuscripts from the National Archives of Argentina, the project brings together work on handwritten text recognition, information retrieval, and knowledge graphs to support the analysis of records that are often difficult to read and search. Led by Viviana Grieco (University of Missouri – Kansas City) and Praveen Rao (University of Missouri – Columbia), the project methods and documentation will likely be useful for readers interested in archival manuscripts and computational work with historical records.

The Teaching with Primary Sources (TPS) Collective is a hub of articles, best practices, and resources supporting education and teaching with primary sources for practitioners across libraries, museums and archives as well as those coming to that work from outside of those spaces.

Mae Casey (Penn State University) recently published an article on the TPS Collective entitled, “Lesson Planning 101: Primary Source Instructional Design for Archivists.” While archives specific, Casey’s article would be a useful tool for anyone looking to bring active learning activities into their class sessions.

The lesson plan focuses on helping the instructor think through the scope of their lesson and what is most important to focus on. The article’s explanation of  ‘backwards design’ and general practices for planning hands-on and engaging lessons with clear actions for instructors and students is widely applicable beyond archival instruction.

In Digital Humanities and/or Digital Scholarship instruction when teaching new tools, methods, or exploration of digital objects breaking down lessons beginning with outcomes, identifying potentially new vocabulary or concepts is important to keep lessons clear and accessible. The template that TPS includes in the article is a helpful outline for planning lessons starting with those sections and then moving through the rest of the lesson. The template would be a useful resource for anyone teaching hands-on lessons looking to clearly outline teacher and student roles throughout each part of the instruction session.

If you are interested in using the template or looking for more information TPS also shares the original toolkit published alongside the template which guides readers through how to use it.

Lise Jaillant, Matthew Kidd, and Lingjia Zhao (all Loughborough University) have shared their report, “Sifting the Digital Heap: A scoping study of AI for government archives – access, backlogs, and responsible practice” via Zenodo. Their report details the GLOW scoping study, part of the overall LUSTRE project, which has the overall aim to “connect policy makers with Computer Scientists, Digital Humanists and professionals in the GLAM sector (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums).” From the paper abstract:

AI can play a decisive role in making digital government records more accessible and manageable, provided that its use is grounded in responsibility and clear purpose. Work is already underway across archives and government, where AI is being used to manage scale, improve accuracy, and enhance public access to digital records – including email, PDFs, spreadsheets, images, scanned documents, audiovisual assets, and social media posts. Building on these foundations, the GLOW study identifies four interlinked priorities for responsible and effective adoption.

First, AI should be applied where it can deliver clear, measurable benefits – particularly in appraisal and selection, sensitivity review, and metadata enrichment for both textual and audiovisual materials. Interviewees repeatedly stressed that the sheer volume of born-digital records now exceeds human capacity, making manual processing unrealistic. As John Sheridan (The National Archives UK) described, effective archival AI workflows will resemble a series of sieves: simple tools handling early filtering (e.g., filetype detection, basic entity extraction), followed by increasingly sophisticated machine learning and language model techniques that surface higher value material for expert review. Used in this layered way, automation can strengthen efficiency and consistency without displacing professional judgement. For example, AI can flag personal or confidential information, identify clusters of potentially significant correspondence, or reveal hidden risks within complex files – reducing the time specialists spend on mechanical triage and enabling them to focus on interpretive and high-stakes decision making.

Second, ChatGPT and other generative AI tools have modified users’ expectations. Users increasingly expect instant, conversational access to archival information; AI‑generated summaries rather than raw documents; cross‑collection synthesis; intelligent handling of poor metadata; and personalised research support – expectations that exceed the capabilities of many archival systems. To adapt to these changing expectations, archival institutions are experimenting with new techniques and protocols such as MCP (Model Context Protocol) and RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation). Used together, MCP and RAG align GenAI discovery with archival values of provenance, authenticity, accountability, and user trust.

Third, progress towards responsible AI depends on implementing a clear and accountable framework. Automation must operate within systems that guarantee transparency, traceability, and security, supported by training and governance that ensure ethical use. Many institutions are already developing policies and guidance, but a unified framework would help align practice across departments and institutions, and safeguard the integrity of public records. A clear and accountable framework for responsible AI should answer questions of purpose, transparency, human oversight, risk/security, and accountability/auditability.

Fourth, the study calls for a coordinated national strategy that connects these efforts. The National Archives (UK), working with ministerial departments and other administrations, is well placed to lead this work in partnership with the wider GLAM and academic sectors. International collaboration with bodies such as the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in the United States and the European Archives Group could extend these principles globally. Through this joined-up approach, which would integrate technology, policy, and human expertise, AI can strengthen public trust and ensure that the digital record remains secure and accessible.

An open-access article titled, “Show Me the Data: New Practices for Historical Sources,” has been published in Transactions of the Royal Historical Society (2026). Authors Ruth Ahnert (Queen Mary University of London), Katherine McDonough (Lancaster University), and Daniel C. S. Wilson (University College London) explore the ecosystem of historical research data in the UK where cultural heritage collections are increasingly digitized and commercialized, posing numerous challenges to researchers in discovering, accessing, and using datasets increasingly locked behind paywalls or located in disparate repositories.

From the abstract:

Drawing on examples from major digital initiatives, we analyse the life cycle of historical research data and highlight the complex interplay of commercial, institutional and scholarly interests that shape access. We distinguish three types of data that emerge from historians’ typical engagements with digitised collections: derived, enhanced and aggregated data. We argue that historians must actively participate in the practices relating to the creation, maintenance and reuse of such data. This will involve new forms of citation, favouring open datasets, improving digital skills and building communities around shared resources.

The analyses provided in this article may be of interest to anyone working on cultural heritage collections as data, digital preservation, or research data infrastructure issues.

The Pudding publishes interactive data storytelling stories on a variety of subjects and topics.

Most recent articles include, “Happy Map,” “Sizing Chaos,” and “Musical Motifs,” although past articles show a range of topics including political, social, pop-culture, sports, and food. Stories often mix custom imagery with dynamic data visualizations to create engaging visual journalism stories.

From their about page:

We believe in journalism that denounces false equivalence, one that can explicitly say Black Lives Matter, one that never views human rights as partisan issues, and one that believes a person’s own experiences are central to strong storytelling.

We hope to be a place that centers and amplifies voices that have long been ignored. We strive for our journalism to be one of key making, not gate keeping, and we won’t shy away from stories that tackle racism, sexism, and classism head on.

We are committed to listening, learning, making changes, and being proactive in the fight for equity, inclusion, and racial and social justice.

Pudding articles are great for classroom instruction either as an introduction to the topic the article explores, as examples of data storytelling, or as inspiration for zine or data visualization/physicalization activities. With over 200 articles to explore across a range of subjects students are sure to find a topic that speaks to them in the archives. Pudding articles are great examples of creating publicly accessible and engaging research-based articles online that can be emulated in many ways both digitally and physically.

The Pudding also holds a yearly competition, The Pudding Cup, which all are encourage to enter with accessible and flexible rules about platforms and tools used to create submissions.

You can also find an open repository of the data used to create Pudding articles on their github.

The Pudding also publishes a newsletter that you can sign-up for to stay in touch about most recent articles, Pudding Cup awards, and more from the team.

The Doris Z. Stone Latin American Library and Research Center at Tulane University has launched the Frans Blom Collection of Documents, Maps, and Images, a new digital collection available through the Tulane University Digital Library. Curated from physical materials held in Tulane’s special collections, the collection brings together documents created by—and documenting the career of—archaeologist Frans Blom (1893–1963).

Blom led archaeological expeditions across Maya regions of southern Mexico and Central America, and the collection traces his work and research networks through correspondence, field diaries, expedition notes, maps, publications, and photographs. Together, these materials provide a detailed view into early professional archaeological research in southern Mesoamerica and the landscapes and communities Blom helped bring into scholarly focus. DH practitioners whose focus is Central and Latinx American studies may find particular interest in this resource’s maps, letters, photographs, field notes, and more.

Access the collection here. 

The Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) Fall 2025 membership meeting briefing sessions included two presentations on the topic of sustaining digital scholarship & humanities. A recording of this session is available now to watch on YouTube.

The first presentation, by Nick Szydlowski (San José State University), is titled “Digital Humanities is for Everyone: Building a Center and Platform to Empower Public Creators,” and explores strategies for maintaining library support for digital and public humanities work in our rapidly evolving political context. The presentation shares about a digital exhibit platform called Rondo developed at the King Library’s Digital Humanities Center, a collaboration between San José State University and the San José Public Library. Built using minimal computing principles, Rondo “supports resource-constrained projects by allowing anyone to create a self-hosted digital exhibit simply by editing a spreadsheet.”

The second presentation, by Sarah Dorpinghaus and Jennifer Hootman (University of Kentucky), is titled, “From Space to Strategy: Building Sustainable Digital Scholarship Services,” and shares “the University of Kentucky Libraries’ experience building impactful and sustainable services out of The Stacks, a new center to support digital scholarship and data-intensive research across disciplines.”

Additional recordings of CNI Fall 2025 project briefings are available to watch on the CNI website.

The International Council on Archives (ICA) has shared an online training program on “Driving Digital Transformation in Cultural Heritage Institutions,” recorded from live sessions held between November 26 and December 3, 2025. Available as a 3-part YouTube video series, the series features five speakers on topics related to digitization, cultural heritage data access, and re-use through emerging technologies like AI. Speakers include:

• Antonella Fresa (University of Pisa), Vice President of Photoconsortium and Director of Implementations at Promoter Srl
• Frederik Truyen (KU Leuven), Professor at the Faculty of Arts, KU Leuven, and Head of DigitGLAM (Digital Transformation in the Library, Archive and Museum sector)
• David Iglésias Franch (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona), Head of the Department of Photography and Audiovisual Records at Girona City Council
• Frederik Temmermans (Vrije Universiteit Brussel), guest professor in multimedia at the Department of Electronics and Informatics
• Eirini Kaldeli (National Technical University of Athens), senior researcher at the Artificial Intelligence and Learning Systems Laboratory

A variety of other livestreamed event recordings are also available on the ICA YouTube channel for viewing.