Lost in the Stacks: the Research Library Rock'n'Roll Radio Show

For an Introduce Yourself show, a systems librarian discusses the many facets of his professional identity and the points of intersection for librarianship and information technology in his job. 

Guest: Thomas Waters, Library Systems Technologist at the Georgia Tech Library.

First broadcast September 18 2026.

Playlist

"... in the center of the Venn diagram between librarianship and information technology."

A professor of AI from Georgia Tech joins the show to discuss synthetic data, AI training on its own output, and other potential conundrums in the ongoing saga of AI in the sciences.

Guest: Dr. Mark Riedl of the School of Interactive Computing, Director of the Georgia Tech Machine Learning Center, and Gitesh Ramamurthy Endowed Professor of AI at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

First broadcast September 11 2026.

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"I think I'm going to try to convince you that some of things that people are worried about right are maybe further off...

For this episode of the GT Library Guidebook series, the show team talks about room G201 in the Georgia Tech Library, also known as the Microfilm Reading Room, and reflects on old media, libraries, and small hidden spaces.

Part XV of The GT Library Guidebook

First broadcast September 4 2026. Transcript at https://hdl.handle.net/1853/81991

Playlist

"I guess I'm Team Microfilm?"

The three assistant deans of the Georgia Tech Library join the show to talk about their jobs, responsibilities, and aspirations in their leadership roles.

Guests: Jay Forrest, Assistant Dean for Collections Strategy and Development; Dr. Mack Freeman, Assistant Dean for Interdisciplinary Initiatives; and Jody Thompson, Assistant Dean for Archives, Records Management, and Digital Curation, all at the Georgia Tech Library.

First broadcast August 28 2026.

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"What's an assistant dean? What do they do? Do I need to worry about them when I'm making plans?"

Elizabeth Keathley and Lisa Grimm, authors of Practical Digital Asset Management (DAM), discuss the principles and the discontents of DAM while reminding us to back digital asset management for the win.

Guests: Elizabeth Keathley and Lisa Grimm, authors of Practical Digital Asset Management

First broadcast August 21 2026. Transcript at https://hdl.handle.net/1853/81976

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"I get excited about DAM because I get to geek out about metadata."

This encore of Part 3 of the occasional series "Citizen Archiving," which considers the archival actions of private citizens, features an interview with the late Steve Albini, legendary recording engineer and musician, about what must be saved, recorded, and considered when creating the master tapes of musical performances.

Part 3 of CITIZEN ARCHIVING

Guest: Steve Albini of Electrical Audio.

First broadcast February 26 2016.

Playlist; Transcript at http://hdl.handle.net/1853/54619

"There may be no Pixies in the old country..."

The hosts of the library-themed WRFG Atlanta public-affairs show Radical Reference With Sister Sai talk about how the show started and their values, process, and plans for radical reference on the radio.

Guests: Saira Raza and Keeza Hameed, hosts of Radical Reference on WRFG Atlanta (and Emory librarians).

First broadcast on August 7 2026. Transcript at https://hdl.handle.net/1853/81972

Playlist

"We're not the only game in town any more!"

In the third and final episode of an unofficial "Library of Congress" trilogy, catalogers from the ALA Core Subject Analysis Committee Working Group on Subfield V Retention discuss the Library of Congress's announcement that they have stopped using Subfield V and form subdivisions, e.g. "Mistaken identity--Juvenile drama."

Guests: Chloe Misorski, Head of Cataloging Services and Library Systems at Cleveland Museum of Art; Eduardo Fojo, Media Cataloger Librarian at Florida International University; and Deborah Tomaras, Metadata and Resource Management Librarian at Marist University. 

First broadcast July 31 2026. Transcript at https://hdl.handle.net/1853/81971

Playlist

Catalogers discuss rejecting neutrality in the creation and management of subject headings, taking special notice of the Library of Congress's insistence on (some version of) "neutrality."

Guests: Deborah Tomaras, Metadata and Resource Management Librarian at Marist University; Tina Gross, Metadata Analyst at University of Minnesota.

First broadcast July 24 2026. Transcript at https://hdl.handle.net/1853/81968

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"We asked Deborah to explain why this quite common term, which has been around since the 1950s, and has literary warrant, was not accepted as a subject heading in 2024."

The show team, with the help of cataloger Sofia Slutskaya, discusses the Library of Congress and tries to answer the question, "We don't have a National Library... or do we?"

Guest: Sofia Slutskaya, Head of Resource Description at Emory University Libraries. Transcript at: https://hdl.handle.net/1853/81867

First broadcast July 10, 2026.

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"As a cataloger, I need a more precise definition."

A Georgia Tech faculty member describes how using AI to write MATLAB code improved a course on chemical reactor design and the benefits of discarding the analytic solution for complex, real-life problems.

Guest: Dr. Michael Filler of the Georgia Tech School of Chemical And Biomolecular Engineering.

First broadcast June 26 2026. Transcript at https://hdl.handle.net/1853/81864

Playlist

"You are expected to use AI tools in this course."

The show team discusses the 2013 blog post "The End of the Library" by M.G. Siegler, clickbait that argued that the economics of ebooks and the existence of the Internet meant that libraries had to change or disappear.

First broadcast June 12 2026. Transcript at https://hdl.handle.net/1853/81848

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"Today's episode is called 'The End of the Library.' No it's not, it's called Clickbait."

The show team has an unthemed conversation for this summer free cut. They discuss travelling to see art, Google Maps, having your assumptions tested, failure as growth, and if the phrase "get in the car, it's summer" has any significant cultural meaning.

First broadcast June 5 2026. Transcript at https://hdl.handle.net/1853/81828

Playlist

"Yeah, it's not really working for me."

Georgia Tech faculty members talk about experimenting with virtual reality tools in a composition course, students experiencing multimodal Hamlet, and assessing how best to teach the "To be or not to be" monologue. Audio from a live recording during the Georgia Tech Library's Media Arts Day, January 29 2026. 

Guests: Dr. Kelly Williams, Marion L Brittain Postdoctoral Fellow at Georgia Tech; Dr. Meryem Yilmaz Soylu, research scientist at the Center for 21st Century Universities (C21U); Alison Valk, the Emerging Technologies Librarian at the Georgia Tech Library. 

First broadcast May 29 2026. Transcript at https://hdl.handle.net/1853/81791

P...

Members of the Georgia Tech Library's Accessibility Community of Practice get into the weeds discussing alt text for mathematics in scholarly works.

Guest: Jordan Moore, User Experience Librarian at the Georgia Tech Library.

First broadcast May 22 2026. Transcript at https://hdl.handle.net/1853/81587

Playlist

"We're getting down in the weeds."

A Georgia Tech scholar from the College of Liberal Arts discusses the place of humanities in academia and how crisis is their natural habitat.

Guest: Dr Richard Utz, Senior Associate Dean for Strategic Initiatives in Georgia Tech's Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts.

First broadcast May 8, 2026. Transcript at https://hdl.handle.net/1853/81266

Playlist. 

"The humanities, as a term, would not exist without substantial crisis in how human beings think about themselves."

A recovering academic discusses Russian dissident literature and why samizdat is not a monolithic genre.

Guest: Dr. Josephine von Zitzewitz, author of The Culture of Samizdat: Literature and Underground Networks in the Late Soviet Union

First broadcast May 1 2026. Transcript at https://hdl.handle.net/1853/81260

Playlist

"Yoga?"

For an Introduce Yourself show, a new but seasoned Georgia Tech librarian discusses his year of firsts in the profession.

Guest: Ryan Gaylor, Reference & Instruction Librarian at the Georgia Tech Library.

First broadcast April 24 2026. Transcript at https://hdl.handle.net/1853/81255

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"Right on."

The librarian who founded and curates International Counterculture Archive at the Global Resources Center at George Washington University discusses hard-bolied magnitizdat (i.e. underground recordings in the Soviet Union).

Guest: Mark Yoffe, Russia, Eurasia, Eastern and Central Europe Resource Center Librarian at George Washington University. 

First broadcast April 17 2026. Transcript at https://hdl.handle.net/1853/81243

Playlist

"You may be familiar with the Russian word samizdat."

The ongoing series "There's an Archivist for That?" features archival work in unexpected places or with intriguing collections. This episode features a specialist in food & drink archives and library services around the science of food and wine and their role in culture.

Guest: Audrey Russek, Head of the UC Davis Food and Drink Collection

Broadcast April 10, 2026. Transcript at https://hdl.handle.net/1853/81239

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"You might not be looking at the cookbook for the recipes, you might be looking at it to understand community."

Guest: Heather Jeffcoat, Web and Discovery Management Librarian at the Georgia Tech Library.

First broadcast April 3 2026. Transcript at https://hdl.handle.net/1853/81151

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"You ever miss the days when you could change a website just by typing in a few HTML lines?"

Guest: Wayne Li, James L. Oliver Professor of the Practice in the Colleges of Design and Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology.

First broadcast March 20, 2026. Transcript at https://hdl.handle.net/1853/80843

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"It's always a tricky question to answer without context."

Guest: Dr. Allison Mickel, H. Bruce McEver Chair in Archaeological Science and Technology in the School of History and Sociology at Georgia Tech.

First broadcast March 13 2026. Transcript at https://hdl.handle.net/1853/80732

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"It's not all excavation."

First broadcast March 6 2026. Transcript at https://hdl.handle.net/1853/80730

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"They need the resources, they need the services, they need the space." 

Guests: Jody Thompson, Assistant Dean for Archives, Records Management, and Digital Curation, Kirk Henderson, Exhibitions Manager, and Connor Lynch, Exhibits Associate at the Georgia Tech Library.

First broadcast February 20 2026. Transcript: https://hdl.handle.net/1853/80711

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"I don't need encouragment or assistance to reminisce about the 90s."

Guest: Dr. Robert "Bo" Jacobs, historian of nuclear technologies.

First broadcast February 13 2026. Transcript at https://hdl.handle.net/1853/80652

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"Yes, optimism!"

First broadcast February 6 2026. Transcript at https://hdl.handle.net/1853/80608

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"I'd like to call it Lucky Thirteen!"

Guest: Dr Lynn Kamerlin, GT professor in the school of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and head of the Kamerlin Lab.

First broadcast January 30 2026. Transcript at https://hdl.handle.net/1853/80597

Playlist

"I called you a champion. That's apt, right?"

Guest: Vanesa Evers, Institutional Repository Librarian at the Georgia Tech Library

First broadcast January 23 2026. Transcript at https://hdl.handle.net/1853/80191

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"Right on."

Guests: Dr. Yanni Loukissas, associate professor of Digital Media in Georgia Tech's School of Literature, Media, and Communication, and Dr. Sylvia Janicki, Digital Media 2025

First broadcast January 16 2026. Transcript at https://hdl.handle.net/1853/80044 

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"I'm trying to not get the willies."

First broadcast January 9 2026. Transcript at https://hdl.handle.net/1853/80043

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"The world has been reminded of just how unpredictable everything is."

First broadcast December 19 2025. Transcript at https://hdl.handle.net/1853/79955

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"We have a Christmas episode. And this is it."

Guest: Dr Gabrielle Thomas, Professor of Early Christianity and Anglican Studies at Emory University

First broadcast December 12 2025. Transcript at https://hdl.handle.net/1853/79941

Playlist

"Disabuse! Yeah, that was the word I was going for."

Guest: Jason Wright, Communications Director for the Georgia Tech Library.

First broadcast December 5 2025. Transcript at: https://hdl.handle.net/1853/79932 

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"I may have made a mistake here."

Rerun from November 26th, 2010.

First broadcast November 21 2025. Transcript. 

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"Maybe a little bit of attitude."

Guest: Dr. Mark S. Burton, clinical psychologist

First broadcast November 14 2025. Transcript at https://hdl.handle.net/1853/79920 

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"I think I sort of fell into psychedelics."

Guest: Cierra Cooper, Public Services Associate Lead at the Georgia Tech Library

First broadcast November 7 2025. Transcript at https://hdl.handle.net/1853/79918 

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"You have to replace that."

Guest: Alison Reynolds, Research Services and Instruction Archivist & Special Collections Curator, Georgia Tech Archives

First broacast on October 31 2025. Transcript at https://hdl.handle.net/1853/79910 

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"How do we justify these purchases at an academic library?"

Guest: Dr. Manda Sexton, Interim Director of Resource Strategy and Management at Kennesaw State University Libraries

First broadcast on October 24 2025. Transcript at https://hdl.handle.net/1853/79881 

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"Do you like people, and do people like you?"