Amanda Whitmire
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thalassalib.bsky.social
Amanda Whitmire
@thalassalib.bsky.social
2.2K followers 1.2K following 540 posts
Oceanographer-turned-librarian | knitting/sewing/dying/fibers | Stanford Libraries + Hopkins Marine Station | MPUSD Board of Education Trustee | on WikiData & iNaturalist as ThalassaLib | How can I help? | she/hers
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thalassalib.bsky.social
A photo from this morning of waves hitting the beach with my library in the background. The sea is angry today, my friends. 🌊
A landscape photo looking up a rocky coastline on a foggy morning. There is a large wave hitting the shore. A beige, single-story building with a clay tile roof sits in the background, a bit further up the coast.
October 23, 2025 at 2:39 AM
thalassalib.bsky.social
Absolute legend!
A young Asian woman in a lab coat is sitting at a large piece of scientific equipment and is turned back to face the camera with a big smile. It’s Isabella Abbott!
October 4, 2025 at 4:33 PM
thalassalib.bsky.social
Hell yeah, @montereybayaquarium.org, send me that otter content! 🦦🌊🦑
Screenshot of an automated text exchange between me and the Monterey Bay Aquarium. The aquarium sent a photo of an otter floating in a kelp forest along with the text: “Did you miss us? The Aquarium is shellebrating Sea Otter Awareness Week starting Sunday. Text SOAW to dive into daily quizzes, furry facts, and more all week!” I responded quickly with “SOAW”.
September 19, 2025 at 7:03 PM
thalassalib.bsky.social
I am “I better print transparencies of this talk for the overhead projector in case the technology fails” years old.
A set of color transparency sheets of slides for a presentation on thin layers sit on a desk in my office.
September 11, 2025 at 4:54 PM
thalassalib.bsky.social
Photos and data from nearly 20 years ago, back when we put CTD casts on floppies! 😂 Found the disks in my garage - an apparently safe storage method …
A woman in Carhartt work pants, Xtratuf boots and a PFD stands on the deck of a research vessel with a small set of oceanographic instruments. She is smiling, presumably happy about the sunny weather and lack of swell. On the starboard deck of a research vessel, a CTD rosette sits next to an open rail. A woman wearing a PFF is walking up to the rosette. The coast is in the background. Someone holds two 3.5-inch floppy disks with “Dickey Mooring CTD data” written on them. They are from February 01, 2006 and May 5, 2006.
August 18, 2025 at 2:43 AM
thalassalib.bsky.social
Last but not least, I grabbed the scrapbooks that document the history of @stanfordhopkins.bsky.social. Only the first album has been scanned & this is now at the top of my digitization list. Totally irreplaceable. 4/
A series of large scrapbook volumes sit on a table in a library. The closest album is the oldest and the fattest. A look inside the oldest album. There is a photo of Timothy Hopkins, who donated money to build the marine station, and a letter from Hopkins to the director of the marine station at that time (1934), Walter K. Fisher.
July 30, 2025 at 8:54 PM
thalassalib.bsky.social
This beauty is one of a kind, and even though it's been scanned, I'd be heartbroken if it was reclaimed by the sea. It's an album, "Marine algae of New England coast," created by collector Grace A, Hall in 1895. Please go admire the photos. searchworks.stanford.edu/view/13786250 3/
A photo of a very old looking album that has a waetherd black leather binding and a blue cover with the word "photographs" on it. A page in the algae album with 4 small specimens arranged on it. They were all very carefully laid out before being pressed so you can see all the parts. The colors are well preserved for being over 100 years old. A very close-up shot of one of the algae specimens so you can see the texture of the paper, the thickness of the algae, and the rust color of the pigments.
July 30, 2025 at 8:54 PM
thalassalib.bsky.social
What I just call "Postels" is an 1840 folio in Russian & Latin that has etchings of marine algae from Russian surveys of the North American west coast in the late 1820s. Not SUPER rare, but rare enough. I love it, so I took it. cc. @gworthey.bsky.social See: searchworks.stanford.edu/view/2225739 2/
A side-view photo of a very large book opened on a table in a library. There is an etching of a species of marine algae that fills one page. A top-view photo of a different page in the album showing the marine alga Macrocystis pyrifera, which is very common here in Monterey.
July 30, 2025 at 8:54 PM
thalassalib.bsky.social
The tsunami warning yesterday was a good reminder to have an emergency plan, whether it's your house or it's your library or lab. What would you take with you to safer ground? Here's what I took home from Miller Library ... 1/ 🌊🦑📚
The trunk of a small SUV has several large books and albums stacked in the back.
July 30, 2025 at 8:54 PM
thalassalib.bsky.social
After one of the biggest earthquakes ever recorded (M8.8), we have been extremely lucky on the California coast to experience only a small tsunami. Looking at the tide gauge data in Monterey, the first wave peaked around 12:50 AM (<1 ft) and we saw the highest wave at 4:30 AM (1.1 ft). 🌊
A data plot of the predicted tide in Monterey (smooth blue line going up and down a few times over 18 hours) and the observed water level (red line that starts with following the blue line very closely, but then becomes erratic and spiky after midnight on July 30th). A closeup view of the previous plot showing the peak of the first wave at 7/30, 00:54 hrs, 4.16 ft when predicted height was 3.48 ft. Another closeup view of the tide data, showing the highest deviation from predicted tide at 4.44 ft when the tide was supposed to be 3.33 ft.
July 30, 2025 at 4:48 PM
thalassalib.bsky.social
Dispatch from @stanfordhopkins.bsky.social - it’s a gorgeous day & the kelp beds are bigger than I’ve ever seen them. They wrap all the way around the station toward Lovers Point. 🌊🦑
A view out to Monterey Bay on a sunny, clear day. Bird Rock is in the foreground, and the calm shoreline shows clear water.
July 24, 2025 at 11:20 PM
thalassalib.bsky.social
Mordecai is business in the front, party in the back.
A tan colored guinea pig with short hair faces the camera. He has the usual cowlick pattern so his short hair sticks up at jaunty angles. The same guinea pig is viewed from the back, and you can now see he has long hair that sticks up and out, flowing back. He is the mullet of guinea pigs.
July 18, 2025 at 9:13 AM
thalassalib.bsky.social
UK camper van 🚐 trip update. I’ve been to yarn shops in Glastonbury, Bath, & Conwy (Wales). I’ve missed a couple on my list b/c we passed through when they were closed. 😔 Off to the Lakes District & then York. England & Wales are *so* lovely so far.
Yarn haul so far. Was happy to find that Wool in Bath carried a coned yarn that will work in my machine (Yarn2Cone 2 ply)! All of the skeins of yarn were made locally to the area where I purchased them, and the handspun was by a local gal in Glastonbury. 💕 A closeup view of three skeins of yarn. They are hand dyed green, blues, and an undyed single ply handspun. Three skeins of hand dyed yarn in purple, cream with rainbow spots, and deep blue/green. Behind them is a cone of 2ply wool yarn in natural colors.
July 13, 2025 at 8:48 AM
thalassalib.bsky.social
I’m in England & I’ve been taking pictures of lots of things I want to upload to @inaturalist.bsky.social, but we’re caravanning around & haven’t had WiFi, so now there’s a queue. Hitting a pub tomorrow for lunch - that’ll be my chance. 10 new “lifer” birds ID’d via Merlin though!
A closeup photo of a clumpy coastal plant with pinkish flowers.
July 9, 2025 at 6:34 PM
thalassalib.bsky.social
I am an introvert. I am also currently president of a school board, so over the last two days I’ve presided over 9 ceremonies (8th grade promotion or high school graduation). I’ve shaken over 1,000 hands. The best days of the year, but I am TIRED. 😮‍💨
I woman takes a selfie with three other people looking at the phone. They are on a stage in bright sun, with some bunting in the background. A view from a stage out to the main arena at Monterey County Fairgrounds. Hundreds of high school graduates in green cap and gown regalia are seen in front of the stage.
June 7, 2025 at 3:47 AM
thalassalib.bsky.social
They pay me to work here? Beautiful morning at @stanfordhopkins.bsky.social
May 29, 2025 at 3:40 PM
thalassalib.bsky.social
Fantastic bike ride at Fort Ord National Monument today. Loved seeing the goats doing fuel suppression ! 🐐
A landscape view up a dirt road with a hill rising on the left. The hill is covered in dry grass and there are maybe a hundred goats grazing. A woman wearing an orange bike helmet and sunglasses smiles for a selfie with a hillside of goats in the background. Close up shot of a mom goat with two very new kids nursing under her. One is white and one is black, and we can only see their rear ends coming out from under her body.
May 27, 2025 at 1:39 AM
thalassalib.bsky.social
Also enjoy this gem from @montereybayaquarium.org, a mashup of their logo with rainbow colors for #pride. I *love* this logo & have one of their t-shirts. As they say, nature is queer!
The Monterey Bay Aquarium logo, which is a circle made out of kelp fronds, is drawn with rainbow lines on a black background.
May 23, 2025 at 11:55 PM
thalassalib.bsky.social
Please enjoy this amazing #pride flag made from ocean beasties. It was sent to me in an email, and a reverse image search sent me to OceanWise, which I think is the source? ocean.org/blog/interna... 🏳️‍🌈🌊🦑
An LGBTQ Progress Pride Flag made up of a composite of different marine animal photos for each colors stripe in the flag. For example, purple is sea urchins, red is a sea fan, green is algae, etc.
May 23, 2025 at 11:11 PM
thalassalib.bsky.social
I’m procrastinating recording a 10-minute talk, so I just spent 20 minutes cleaning my desk. 🤔
An L-shaped office desk next to a window holds a laptop, two monitors and lots of tchotchkes but is otherwise sparkling clean.
May 16, 2025 at 10:57 PM
thalassalib.bsky.social
Pulling my thoughts together for what could be the first paper I've written in 10 years. These thoughts tie together what it means for me to be working as a librarian at a field research station during a time of unprecedented global change. How/where do I direct my efforts & why?
A Venn diagram with three overlapping circles for "Field Station," "Librarians," and "Anthropocene." Within each circle, these concepts are described, eg., "Field Station" says, "Research & teaching is often place-based, observational, time-series." The overlaps between the circles are also described. So, a field station librarian is a curator of local research and instruction, often with an abundance of student work and grey literature. Field stations in the Anthropocene are places that track and understand change, making local observations over ecologically and climatologically relevant timescales. Librarians of the Anthropocene select and transform local research materials to make them actionable, adopting the praxis of collections-as-data. A field station librarian in the Anthropocene ties all of this together by engaging in collections-as-data work with highly localized collections of materials that support research that advances our understanding of the world.
May 5, 2025 at 11:55 PM
thalassalib.bsky.social
Really looking forward to visiting UC Santa Cruz tomorrow to give a talk for the Ocean Sciences seminar series! I'm going to talk about my various collections-as-data shenanigans & ask for feedback on how my work can better support research in the Monterey Bay area. 🦑🌊
A flyer for the Ocean Sciences Spring 2025 Seminar Speaker Series at UC Santa Cruz. There is a headshot of me wearing glasses. The title of my talk is, "Field Station Librarianship in the Anthropocene."
May 1, 2025 at 6:12 PM
thalassalib.bsky.social
I took a mental health break and made a bracelet with the LOC call number for this aerial photograph of @stanfordhopkins.bsky.social [ca. 1980]. Have plans for more! #DHmakes
A bracelet with the Library of Congress call number for an aerial photograph. The bracelet is sitting on the ears of a 3D printed balloon dog tape dispenser. A black and white aerial photograph of Hopkins Marine Station.
April 25, 2025 at 11:18 PM
thalassalib.bsky.social
Why is my job at a field station so interesting & rewarding? Because of the collections. 😍 Almost everything on this slide is unique to my library - found nowhere else. Most of it was uncataloged until I got here, none if it was digitized.
A presentation slide titled, "What are the librarians up to? Curating unique, local collections." Examples are student work, photos, research, and locals and their stuff.
April 24, 2025 at 9:23 PM
thalassalib.bsky.social
In my work as a librarian at a field station, I put a lot of effort into curating historical data to help researchers understand change. We talk about ecological baselines, but every time I look back folks were talking about how things are changing! Here's Ed Ricketts in 1946 looking back @ 1930. 🦑🌊
Scanned front and back of a Pacific Biological Laboratories species survey card for the purple urchin, Strongylocentrotus purpuratus, from the region Cape Flattery, WA to Point Conception, CA. He notes that purple urchins are common but "spotty," while the red urchin (the previous card to this) is much harder to find than it was 16 years ago (1930). See the cards here: https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/ws742qs8899
April 23, 2025 at 11:37 PM