Letterlocking refers to the folding and securing any substrate (such as parchment or paper) to function as its own envelope. Letterlocking is part of a 10,000-year-old information security tradition, ranging from Mesopotamian clay bullae to Bitcoin paper wallets. Letterlocking was an everyday activity for centuries, across cultures, borders, and social classes, and plays an integral role in the history of secrecy systems as the missing link between physical communications security techniques from the ancient world and modern digital cryptography.

Announcing a world first! Our amazing interdisciplinary team has virtually unfolded and read an unopened letter from 1697 without breaking its seal, and officially launched #letterlocking as a field of study in Nature Communications. https://rdcu.be/cf4jH

Visit https://www.letterlocking.org and https://www.brienne.org to learn more.

The URL for this Letterlocking YouTube channel is https://www.youtube.com/c/Letterlocking

Can hackers be certified? Rebecca Slayton looks at efforts to blend, certify and market the subversive skills of hacking with the ethos of professionalism.

A study published by UNESCO in 2015 stated that globally, women represented only one-third of all researchers in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields as of 2011. Yet, computing was a field heavily influenced by women in the early days of electronic computers.  Now, in order to increase gender diversity in the male dominated tech sector, it is becoming ever more important for policymakers to seek ways to improve inclusion of women in STEM careers. Chicago Policy Review sat […]

The History of the URL: Domain, Protocol, and Port

On May 28, 1945, Violet Wallach of Locust, New Jersey, complained that black residents in her area had to enter a back door in the Navesink township library. Once they entered, black would-be reade…

From “The Library Assistant’s Manual,” Theodore Koch’s advice to aspiring librarians.

Local history web portal.

Supporters of open access and traditional publishing models clash during the American Historical Association's annual meeting.

At the annual meeting of the American Historical Association, young scholars distance themselves from the organization's stance on embargoing dissertations and encourage new forms of graduate work.

I had three minutes to give a talk to a diverse audience, so this is my crack at it below. The audience could then follow up with us at our poster, which I’ll also put online. It was an incre…

History students digitize historical objects in their communities.

Elementary for an info pro; might be useful in convincing a historian.