User:Rita Graca/readingwriting3

Introduction to Shadow Libraries

Abstract (Library Genesis)

Library Genesis is a digital library with a catalog of more than 25 million documents. The website owners describe themselves as “random book collectors”, which means they don’t accept requests or focus on curating materials. The topics are broad: from business, economy, and geology to housekeeping and leisure. The dimension of this library is enormous, there are even several copies of the same books. The content is mostly written material.
Although this huge library seems to take information without any specific methodology, the reasons don’t seem completely apolitical. The main page of the website links to a letter of solidarity with strong opinions on sharing materials, copyright, moral values, etc.
All people are encouraged to upload content and to download it too. There’s no score to maintain, log-in necessary, or price to pay. The desire of the platform to exist is well seen in the possibility of downloading all content, accessing the database and making mirrors.

Group reflection and questions

What could be the motivation to make such a library? What is the message they might be trying to spread?
The scale, the amount of data provided in a library is directly related to the energy and time needed to provide them.
How is responsibility distributed ?
How are shadow libraries of different scales and purposes interconnected?
Are shadow libraries interconnected to each other, even if they have different scales and purposes, because what they have in common is that they brake the law (so they are vulnerable)?
flag of convenience
Do they have moral goals, or anarchist goals? Is an anarchist goal immoral (or moral)?
Symbolic gesture
Is it a solidarity gesture?
You can copy the website and mirror it. They don't claim ownership
Is there a heroic attitude of "liberating" knowledge? (robin hood style)
What values does it communicate?
Can these values be seen as coming from a particular cultural context (e.g. post-Communist, Eastern-bloc samzidat techniques)?
Is it moral to publish books which have a commercial goal?
Is the librarian replaced by a random algorithm?
Is there a librarian?
Who is responsible and what are they responsible for?
Non-curation can be a critical position; it is nort imposing a particular position.
Are they collecting material just because they can?
Yes! No filters;
Is this dissident activity?
They don't care a lot about the quality, everything is welcome. Duplicated material
Do they try to curate doubled material?
Why is it easier to support piracy for academic research than for recreational purposes?
Distinctions between "knowledge" and "information" / Democratic principle of sharing knowledge in the name of progress / Providing a benefit to society What are the conditions of making something legitimate? (if we shift back to copyright - see also bootleg drugs,)
benefit for the greater good? is it based on profit?
What would be the first shadow library to be considered legitimate?
Why can't a fiction book (or anything besides articles) be considered research, culture, important to share, meaningful...?

Annotated actions

pad: https://pad.xpub.nl/p/08_05_19

Outline of the workshops

First

pad: https://pad.xpub.nl/p/IFL_22_05_19

Group project: create a library focused on the capacity of annotation.
What can be in this library besides books? How can we understand knowledge outside the written medium (books, articles, academic research...)
If we have different files, then what other forms of annotation, besides text annotation. Wants to explore this!
Examples of ways of annotating other media, as rapgenius.com, video annotation with time-stamps, video annotation on subtitles cues, hypothes.is, ...
How is this library going to be different than a cloud-folder? It is about 'sharing' -- making public. It means not only for ourselves but for a public. Because of time, the project will be first of all about why/how to annotate and maybe not about the notes themselves.

• What collection deserves to be made public?
• Media-on-media annotation?
• Stretching the categories of knowledge by adding other media?

I find similarities with Artemis' project & Simon's?

Second

pad: https://pad.xpub.nl/p/IFL_22_05_19

Most of the subjects that we have been working on (such as piracy, file-sharing, and shadow libraries) work outside the law. Although illegal, sharing academic books seems to be morally acceptable by most of us. But what happens if we are studying Cinema, and watching a film becomes our research? Is it different to download a book or a song?

Aim:

• Invite people to make choices to start a conversation on what we find moral, immoral, ethical, what we perceive as knowledge, role of pirate libraries, the importance of sharing the culture...
• Talk about these activities in a group, shed light upon these issues
• Because what is moral/immoral is so personal, some interesting confrontations can happen
• The place where the workshops will happen is important. It would be interesting to go outside the artist/activist bubble and have diverse opinions.

But that can also be my role, to be the devil's advocate and ask more provoking questions.

Practical example:

• Conversation starters where you divide the participants based on a question: "Move right if you think stealing a book is different than downloading it", "Move back if you don't know what the legal implications of downloading a file are", "If you'd write a book, would you consider distributing it for free?", etc.
  

Is important to start with easy questions to set an entry point for the workshop and to get a sense of the practical knowledge of the participants (I found difficult in the launch of the special issue 8 to start explaining my research because I didn't know how much the person knew about networks, if they were very informed or not at all)
(Possible inspiration: "A day in the courtroom" by Eva Weinmayr; "Middle ground"; "Conditional design workbook")

• New Knowledge: through the discussions between the participants. But how does my knowledge, what we learned, gets visible?

• How is annotation being discussed here?
  

We can annotate the discussion: with other questions that come up, answers, notes... what could be an interesting way of doing this?
Thinking besides written notes
If this discussion is recorded then annotated on, several layers can be put together.
The workshop shouldn't be the end point, but the starting point of the annotation

• The questions should be related to the set of texts we are using as a group, quoting books, films, etc.

• How to document the workshop?

The annotations seem to be an important part of the documentation.

• How will people interface with my project?

Third

pad: https://pad.xpub.nl/p/IFL_2019-06-04-selection

Outline of the workshop with Biyi

After our interviews with Leeszaal, we will turn the questions to our audience, and encourage them to make decisions. (it's ok here to adapt a more provocative tone.)

• Proposal: A system to facilitate discussion around librarianship on a more personal level.

• Why: In different ways, all workshops try to bring hidden, marginal processes to the light.

Our workshop would like to turn the discussions about libraries, books, copyright and piracy from abstract concepts to real experiences.

• Goal: Not only sharing the same opinions and discussing new ones but creating small communities.

For example, by saying that we all download books we aknowledge the issue.

• How to do:

Make it spatial: (a reference is Middleground, Joana Chicau workshop, https://hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Summer_Academy_2018/p/Media_Choreographies:_rehearsal_series make the space as an axis to generate feedback) can get rid of the screen be an option? because the screen is a distraction because it's so centered! — we can divide the space would be nice to let the audience have a chance to witness documentation of workshop output

• Our input:

We want to also provide input, and weave the input in a nice way during the question/discussion (not only rely on their answers, and it results in some kind of "consumer questionnaire poll" We enrich the discussion by providing background stories, small texts/articles, information

• Tools: Is there any prototyping tool that would add value? help in some way?

• Examples of questions:

1. I bought books from physical bookstores recently.
2. I bought books from online platforms recently. sub question: I bought the books from (which), (which), (which) platform. I buy from (which) platform most.
3. I follow suggestions from online platform recommendations, I found them useful.
4. I downloaded online pirate copies of books.
5. I made purchases of legal digital copies of books.
6. I keep a record of my book collections.
7. I bought a book in the last month.
8. I downloaded a book in the last month.
9. I've been in a library where the librarian was a male.
10. I think it's morally different to download a book or to download a movie.

Assume identities? roles? new roles - the algorithm writer for book recommendation/ the server manager

Leads for discussion after questions are asked:
Can you describe the books in your home? What books do you have more, and what books you don't have?

• Documentation Method

Goal: To gather preliminary schemes, outputs during the event, feedbacks for the publication Method: Recording the workshop using voice recording

!! The "data", the answers are not that important, is the discussion we want to document and find worth to keep.

Dramaturg:d/Actions

1. Circulate in the room, just keep walking. If you download files illegally stop walking.
2. people stop or not
3. Make other questions
4. We regroup and continue the discussion. Asking about what they would like to see in these platforms, etc.
5. We provide a piece of text, articles, inform about a specific case, a law, ...

Geometry for spatial division
Props for posture: chairs, ...

Fourth

pad: https://pad.xpub.nl/p/IFL_13_06_2019

Knowledge in Action

Through role-play, you will perform the activities crucial to the sustenance of libraries. You will interpret and reimagine the actors that take part in knowledge production and distribution, such as the librarian, the researcher, the pirate, the publisher, the reader, the writer, the student, the copyist, the printer.

The workshop consists of three activities where different scenarios shift your accustomed perspective to start common dialogues. Put yourselves in the shoes of the librarian, imagine together a reading space, and contest the morality of knowledge proprietization.

Fifth (last one?)

KNOWLEDGE IN ACTION

Welcome, everyone. Since our workshop is hosted in Leeszaal, we can explain how our workshop is connected to Leeszaal. We were interested in the hidden processes that libraries go through, such as the selection of books, their categorization, the organization of the shelves. With these questions in mind, we interviewed Ronny and Laura, who are volunteer librarians at Leeszaal. They generously introduced to us the basics of how Leeszaal operates. Leeszaal is a particular reading room here in the Rotterdam West as it stands between a community center and library.

We were surprised by the number of books that travel in and out of this place, the flexibility of not having to catalog incoming books to fullest details. For example, a looser notion of a category is used here, compared to research libraries. It made sense since Leeszaal is for the flow of the books. The meaning of what a library is, who does it serve, became clearer and broader to us. From illegal libraries that try to offer everything they can put their hands on, to particular curated content or personal reading lists, the circulation of knowledge can occur in different forms.

This workshop consists of three activities of role-play sessions. Through role-play, you will perform the activities crucial to the sustenance of libraries. You will interpret and reimagine the actors that take part in knowledge production and distribution, such as the librarian, the researcher, the pirate, the publisher, the reader, the writer, the student, the copyist, the printer.

The activities embed you in different scenarios to shift your accustomed perspective to start common dialogues. Put yourselves in the shoes of the librarian, imagine together a reading space, and contest the morality of knowledge proprietization.

ONE — Librarian's Choice

A librarian is challenged with the task of choosing books from the large amounts that come to the library regularly. Before any categorization, the destiny of the book is determined: to keep or to throw away. In this activity, we ask you to represent the librarian and make choices like one. When we perform these processes of selection we understand how one's understanding of what should be displayed influences knowledge circulation.

• In this first activity, you are assigned to the role of the librarian, please walk around bookshelves in Leeszaal and select a book. (you have a few minutes to decide)

• (Group gathered) Now, we will ask you to decide in a group which half of the books to keep, and half to throw away. Remember that you are a librarian, try to think outside your personal preference.

• We will give you a scenario:

1. Decide on what books to keep/throw away for a shadow library (explain if necessary)
2. Decide on what books to keep/throw away for a research university
3. Decide on what books to keep for an international book donation project

Did anything change?

• As a third action, you decide now over book categories. We provide 10 categories from Leeszaal, the group should decide on 5 to keep, 5 to throw away.

1. Duurzaamheid Milieu - Sustainability Environment
2. Religie Spiritualiteit - Religion Spirituality
3. Rechten - Rights
4. Medisch - Medical
5. Humor - Humour
6. Vrouw Feminisme - Female feminism
7. Streekromans / Romantiek - Regional novels / Romanticism
8. Landen - Nations
9. Filosofie — Philosophy
10. Kindereboeken - Children's books

• We will give you a scenario:

1. Leeszaal Library (insert Leeszaal interview about who are the audiences)

TWO — Ideal Library

When we use libraries we usually desire a certain service and expect specific behaviours. However, the creation of shadow libraries has changed a lot of predefined ideas: you don't need authorization to read, you don't need to be in a quiet room, maybe you don't need a librarian. In this activity the participants are asked to imagine new places and to eradicate preconceived ideas about these places. By doing so, we can conceptualize a future for libraries, where books, digital files, and other spaces come together and stay relevant for us.

• Think now as a user, the reader, the library goer. The goal is to create our collective ideal library. We provide cards and ask you to:

1. Write three categories of books/files you would like to have.
2. Think about spaces. (space for yourself, space for collective reading, space in transit...)
3. Imagine a scope of audiences (do you want to make it a safe space? invitation only? membership? radical openness? )
4. Redesign the services (how does the library provide books? does it allow scanning? do you want a librarian? or a robot to organize the shelves? e.g. in Leeszaal people can have the books forever, and in traditional libraries you need to return them in due time)

• You should all think about the organization of the categories and organization of the space. What books/spaces are near what?

THREE — Discussion in the Library

During the previous two activities, we become familiar of how do current libraries operate, and how may we imagine ideal libraries. The following activity takes you to a discussion that revolves the current phenomenon of the shadow libraries and open access, as a site for reorganizing of knowledge distribution. In this activity, you'll be assigned to roles that play a part in academic resources circulation. The discussion aim to map out relationships between these players, acknowledge friction and seek collaboration.

• Choose a role/character. (we give badges with names, cards with quotes and explanation of each role)
• Take some time to read the quotes and familarize with your character. (five minutes to prepare)
• We provide a case.
• Start the discussion with a round of introductions: who are you, what do you defend? (three minutes)
• You should defend your character's best interests. Make use of the quotes if you want, but feel free to improvise.

CASE 1: Ming recently graduated from a Chinese University, so she lost access to her university resources. Should she make a way to pay the expensive academic journal database or use shadow libraries instead? Speak from the best interest of the roles you have selected and interpret the scenario.

CASE 2: A researcher just made significant discoveries in a particular field and would like to make the work available to as many people as possible. Speak from the best interest of the roles you have selected and interpret the scenario.

pad: https://pad.xpub.nl/p/BR_17_06_2019

Interview with Leeszaal librarians Laura and Ronny

transcription: https://pad.xpub.nl/p/IFL_2019-06-04-selection-transcription
editing: https://pad.xpub.nl/p/Iibrarian_interview

Our names are Biyi and Rita and we are students of the Experimental Publishing program at Piet Zwart Institute. Today we will interview two librarians working in Leeszaal, Ronny and Laura.

Could you introduce yourself and tell us what you do in Leeszaal?

Ronny: Yes. My name is Ronny, I am 32 years old. I've been volunteering here for almost three and a half years. I am part of the books team, which receives books on a weekly basis. We receive books that are donated in boxes, they come in sometimes thirty boxes per week, sometimes ten boxes. They need to be sorted into categories afterward.

Does your background relate to librarianship?

Ronny: Yes, I studied in Haifa University in Israel and I worked a bit in the library there but now I work in Rotterdam School of Management. It’s not related to libraries but it is related to education, so I like the combination. My father is Dutch and it was our dream to come back to the Netherlands. When it was economically possible, we came.
Laura: I work in a library but I didn’t study library science. I studied classical languages, Greek and Latin, but I've been working in a library for 15 years now.

Is Leeszaal a reading room, or do you call it a library?

Laura: It's a volunteer library, but there are differences with normal libraries. It's kind of unique concept.
Laura: It's unique because the books are free, you don't have to be a member of the Leeszaal, you can just walk in, take a book and walk out. We don't ask your name, we don't ask you to show us which books you are going to take.
Ronny: And you don't have to bring them back. You can choose to bring them back, or bring something else.

Do people bring the books back?

Ronny: Not usually. But sometimes they do.

Where do the books in Leeszaal come from?

Laura: Most books come from normal people, people from Rotterdam. Sometimes, when someone dies, his or her books come here. Most of the time the books are just from people who are not going to read them anymore. And they don't like the idea of throwing away books as garbage.
Ronny: If the kids are grown, the parents give away books that are no longer suitable for them.
Laura: We have to sort everything that comes in here.

What would be the normal path for a book after arriving in Leeszaal?

Ronny: When the books arrives, Laura comes in three times per week to sort them to categories.
Laura: The first step is to decide will we keep it or not. Stastistically, we filter out half of the donation. Because they are too old, too dirty, or it's a title that we've already had for ten times. So there are lot of reasons to throw books away.

Do you see annotations often? Would that be a reason to not keep a book?

Laura: Yeah, for me that can be a problem. If there are all kind of colors on the page, or everything is written, ... I don't think I will keep it.

What do you do with the books that you don’t want?

Ronny: We have containers back here, and there’s a company that comes and recycle them. Sometimes twice a week, sometimes once a week. That's really a lot of books!

Do you often receive repetitive titles - such as Harry Potter? What do you do with them?

Laura: Yes, in case of Harry Potter we will keep. Because they will also be picked up quickly. Some books are less popular, and are brought here really often. For example the gift books, which you get for free when you buy a book during the book week. Look, for example this one (showing an example). It's from the yearly book fair, and came in for free when you purchase a book. Lots of people have such books. And they don't even read them. We can't keep all of these books.
Ronny: Or those that are popular during the 90s, 80s, some of them we still keep, but if we get like ten copies of the same one then, it's not necessary. They are not popular anymore.

Do you usually see people wanting certain books from a certain category? Is there high demand for particular categories?

Laura: Philosophy! Everyone seems to like philosophy!
Ronny: And psychology and art, religion sometimes.

Is there the case where these books have more donations as well?

Laura: No. Sometimes people keep asking for a book and we don’t have anything left on the shelves.

What can you tell us about the organization of the shelves?

Laura: The novels are in alphabetical order.
Ronny: The English novels as well, but not the rest. This such a small collection that you can see within 10 minutes if we have something you want. The time that we would invest in alphabetization it is not worth it. We also don’t have a catalog, it would take us so much time it becomes impossible. Laura: Yes, in some weeks we receive over a thousand books.
Ronny: It takes out all the fun if you have to worry about cataloging.

Can you tell us a bit about what are the visitors like? Who comes here?

Ronny: Everybody. It's young families, old people, middle aged people, adults, Dutch and foreigners, if they know about this place. Sometimes groups come here from other cities in the Netherlands, sometimes teachers with students.
Laura: And homeless people. They don't come here for the books but to have a place to sit, that's also ok. If they behave alright.

What is allowed in this space? Is it possible to copy the books?

Ronny: We don't have photocopy machines, only computers. (Computers at the aisle for public use)
Ronny and Laura: We have rules like no alcohol, and people should behave themselves. For each category we have rules for how many books you can take per day. So nobody will come with a container and take 50 books. Because that is not the intention. Just respect each other and listen to the volunteers, and don't make too much noise.

What is the role of Leeszaal, does it go beyond the books? We saw that you have a full agenda of workshops and other activities.

Ronny: It's something between a community center and library, maybe, you could say. Because all the activities. And there is also a Dutch lesson.
Laura: Yes, Cafe NL.
Ronny: There are language related events on a weekly basis, also in the evenings there are some music events, or cultural events. Each time it's something else. Every Thursday evening there is something with the dinner. The intention is to attract people from different backgrounds, to be wide.

We also saw Linux presentation day...

Ronny and Laura: That's twice a year.

Is it very often that people approach Leeszaal with a project?

Ronny: There are some projects sometimes, it is possible. If people are interested they talk to the volunteers, Usually it's possible.
Ronny: The room where we are now stores books, but is also used for other projects. Sometimes we want to make a full space with books about cats. So we collect them for a few months, we put them in boxes and we think about a day when we can display them, and then we do it. So this room is also for these projects.

How often do these projects happen?

Ronny: At least once a month.
Laura: As often as we want to.
Ronny: When we have a good idea to begin to pay more attention to cat books, or books about Dante, and we start to put them aside. We put the books on a shelf where they can see it more easily, to attract attention, to show that we try our best.

The cat’s books, did it happen?

Laura: Yes! Twice. People really like it.

How do you think of librarians being a gendered role?

Biyi: I’m really curious because my grandmother studied biology and then, because of life circumstances, 5 or 10 years before her retirement, she became a librarian and I started to become more aware of this gender role of the female librarian.
Ronny: In Haifa University most of the students were women but also some men.
Biyi: More of the people who chose to study librarian sciences?
Ronny: Yes, it’s more a feminine profession.

Does this reflect in volunteers that work here? Are there more women?

Laura: A bit more. But also men. We have over 100 volunteers now.

There’s a lot of physical books in Leeszaal, and it seems people want them.

Ronny: Yes, in Rotterdam West they do. I don’t know about the rest of the world.

Thank you! That's all of our questions.

revisions have been made to the interview during transcription

Interview with Dubravka

Introduction

The different reactions from our workshop in Leeszaal leads to new questions and discussions. New input came from ourselves while preparing the activities, from our colleagues and from the participants of the workshop. When we had the opportunity to interview Dubravka Sekulić, we knew it would be valuable to understand her perspective on the topics we have been discussing. Dubravka had been involved closely with the past editions of Interfacing the Law in 2017 and 2018, with contributions in workshop and presentations on the topic of extra-legal libraries.

Dubravka Sekulić is an architect, writer, and researcher focusing on the topics of the transformation of contemporary cities, at the nexus between the production of space, laws, and economy. She is an assistant professor at the IZK Institute for Contemporary Art, TU Graz (since September 2016), after spending three years as a PhD fellow at the Institute for History and Theory of Architecture, ETH Zürich, Switzerland. She is an amateur-librarian in Public library/Memory of the World, a real-time catalog of shared libraries through Calibre.