User:)biyibiyibiyi(/RW&RM 03

08_05_2019 Exploring Annotation possibilities

How can annotation be useful to us, and a third party?

Possible ways:

Keep text and annotations together

• scan and overlay transparencies (more like a graphical representation but perhaps not very readable)
• write, re-write, cut and paste the annotations in a bigger paper all together
• use the annotation bot (a digital tool)(it would be cool if you could underline, etc - yes! including graphic elements)
• if digital, create the  possibility to turn on and off the annotations to keep the original text
• bind the pages into books and make a bootleg library with them




Separate text and annotations (deconstruction / structure analysis)

• only underlined text (in many ways: lines, circles, waves...)
• list of questions, tags, notes + composition and mapping of them (different mapping techniques)
• historical timeline
• only drawings?
• free graphical interpretation

Computer driven annotation

• scrape the text (words processing)
• pattern recognition
• delete all articles and implicit elements

Combine the above possibilities

• overlay of analog annotations to represent "heat patterns" (parts of the text with lots of/little engagement), as well as a digital version that is more legible
• HOW DO I KNOW WHAT I AM READING? We are discussing form how do we talk about content? 
• How do you make the content readable for others?
• How do you communicate what you're interpreting?

22_05_2019 Developing future workshop around annotation

Aim

This series of workshops aims make to the operations of the shadow library visible. We approach this through a series of methods of annotation which investigate its structure. We use methods which usually involve modes of encryption and encoding (watermarking &c). We aim to make visible the processes of labour, production and distribution which are usefully rendered invisible. These methods provide modes of annotation. We will use a particular collection of texts. The aim is to set up a system which can be applied on a local level and later be extended.

refining the possibilities discussed during last session

what technologies of annotation could be developed?

• Analog and digital annotation 
• Multimedia annotation in new platforms, has annotating Music, Video, Lyrics
• Watermarking as a form of annotating authorship, how turning it around and delete the watermarks. Rather than being proprietorial, how to twist this. Use watermarking to create the ability to define provenance.
• Merge multiple annotations of the same content on a single place https://www.iri.centrepompidou.fr/outils/lignes-de-temps-2/?lang=en_us
• https://web.hypothes.is/
• The plurality of annotation systems, annotation through different medium, that there is not perfect system.
• Metadata [annotations in files that are apparently invisible, for the computer to read, such as SISO]
• Social network for multiple annotations / or collectively indexing [on reddit, people annotate threads by voting and downvoting; on douban (Chinese semi-social media platform on books and media, users can annotate reading remarks.] http://pzwiki.wdka.nl/mediadesign/User:Tancre/Special_Issue_9/About_categories,_tags,_keywords,_metadata_and_so_on...] 
• Levels of annotation/ hierarchies?establish rules to define the relevance of annotations. Annotation as thermometer for relevance
• Recording verbal annotations coming from collective reading/watching/listening: transcribe discussions

consider the methods you have used to date (consider the advantages and limitations, {vis a vis what you want from this project})

• Cataloguing, indexing (such as the library system in rietveld academy, Evernote)
• Scanning, tracing, replicating, identifying, naming

consider the possibilities of the methods you have been introduced to as annotation tools or methods (such as, watermarking and steganography)

• The possibility of opening up the concept of "shadow" or "shadowing": zooming in the invisible layer of library to witness traces.
• exiftool
• OCR, and other ways of easing the process of publishing files
• Git 
• HTML
• Pad
• Bot

purpose of your workshop

Biyi: a field for collective action and thinking, therefore challenging singular top-down direction in knowledge production [in particular in media, news, publishing industry]. As space and tools is given to annotation, I want to explore "curatability" of annotation, how can annotation be curated? Curated annotation is an archive, challenging authority of canonized, scholastic works. How? [In workshops of annotation, tools are given to experiment. Annotators are encouraged to gather and discuss opinions towards main content. Make a toolkit/framework for curating annotations.

outline

Theme: Reorganizing Knowledge: Curating pirate libraries [Pirate Librarian], curating annotations [Annotation Librarian]. I use librarian to refer to roles of organizing, taking care of, distributing, sharing, communicating knowledge. Who is the librarian in context of online shadow libraries? On Library Genesis, the main interface provides a search field to look for books. It is unlinke the conventional library, where physical collections placed according to categories provides an overview of thematic relationship between books. On the other hand, Monoskop provides background insights to its collections, stored in Wiki format. Reader can browse around interested areas on the Wiki, gain an insight on specific knowledge fields and choose corresponding literature. This role of librarian is not a role that one individual is occupied with, but rather,

Aim: As the audience become familiarized with know-hows of pirate library and annotation, I want to invite them to think and act further on how are pirate library and annotation tools capable of making structural changes to knowledge production? Via pirate libraries and collective annotation tools, can knowledge production happen on peer to peer basis, overcoming top-down paradigms of knowledge access barriers? By establishing more accessible, decentralized spaces and communities, the production of knowledge is being redefined by participating readers, annotators, collectors.

New Knowledge: Arena book stacks

Role of Annotation: Via collective annotation, people can discuss and share thoughts together. Annotation curation can give a active, well structured place or organizing thoughts coming from readers who do not hold authorship in the conventional sense. In this activity, readers are encouraged to shift their attention from reading the author to reading their peers. Make a better document for you - Make a better document for US.

references of from Joca and Tash's project from the past speical issue on Librarianship. Self librarianship - there is Amazon these days, why need librarians? Algorithmic librarianship, how is work being reformed ? redistributed? Are amazon reviewers librarians? Self-responsibilizaiton

How will people interface to your project?

Text for Publication: The Library is Open

General Introduction Text

Letter from XPUB: The Library Is Open (Total:2 pages) GENERAL INTRODUCTION

Rotterdam, 3 July 2019

Dear readers,

In the spring and summer of 2019 we developed The Library Is Open, a publication which focuses on the operations, actions, and roles of legal and extra-legal libraries. Central to this project is the community that forms around a collection of texts – the custodians of the collection and the readers.

The Library Is Open is the result of the third iteration of Interfacing the Law, an ongoing research project between XPUB and Constant (BE), which explores issues around extra-legal libraries, software and legal interfaces and intellectual property. Led by our guest editor Femke Snelting, we participated in many activities which were organised by invited guests: With Bodó Balázs, an economist and researcher on shadow libraries, we analysed the gargantuan dataset of Library Genesis, to determine trends which indicate access to texts and the social, geo-political and economic aspects at play
.  With Anita Burato and Martino Morandi at the Rietveld Library in Amsterdam, we discovered the subjectivity of subjects and thorny issues of classification and representation
.  With other readers, we deepened our understandings of texts through collective annotations. With artist and researcher Eva Weinmayr, who introduced us to The Piracy Project, we examined the possible motivations and differences between pirated books and their "source". With open-source software such as Tesseract, pdftk, and LibreOffice (and many others) we explored the technical processes used during the creation of pirate libraries, and the hidden labour involved in this. With fellow pirates, we considered the multiplicity of roles and activities involved in maintaining various libraries, such as Monoskop, Libgen, Aaaaaarg, Sci-Hub, Memory of the World, Project Gutenberg, +++. With Dušan Barok, the administrator of Monoskop and an alumnus of the Piet Zwart Institute, we discovered how Monoskop was initiated and how it has changed over time.

The variety of our collective sessions, and the practical exercises we performed led us to organise an afternoon of three workshops that directly address the active role of piracy, rather than simply talking about it. Encouraging small, informal, collective actions, we wanted to challenge the ordinary, hierarchical presentation of research projects in the academic context, and individual notions of authorship. When choosing a suitable venue for our event, we decided to ask Leeszaal (in Dutch "Reading Hall") to host our workshops. Situated in a busy, multicultural area of Rotterdam, Leeszaal exemplifies many values we sympathise with, particularly open access to knowledge, and a focus on the community that uses the space, not just for reading but for many other social purposes. These values we recognise (somewhat nostalgically) as reminiscent of public libraries of yesteryear. However, the landscape today is quite different, with huge online commercial repositories of texts (e.g. JSTOR), protected by paywalls which limit access to them, and in response the emergence of "shadow libraries".

In the following pages we invite you to wander through the dilemmas, outcomes and reflections that came out of our three different workshops, and interviews with people whose work is at the centre of the issues that each workshop uncovers.

Knowledge In Action explores the roles and activities within libraries, such as selection and inclusion of books. Interview with: Dubravka Sekulić & Leeszaal staff. Blurry Boundaries reveals the hidden processes and labour between the publishing and distribution of physical and digital books. Interview with: Dušan Barok. Marginal Conversations highlights the sociality of texts, and how they can become conversations through collective reading, annotation and performance. Interview with: Marcell Mars & Tomislav Medak.

Yours in piracy, XPUB {our signatures or names could follow this}

Introduction to Knowledge in Action Text

Knowledge in Action Workshop introduction

We looked for different ways that knowledge can be maintained and preserved. We visited different libraries of different scales. We investigated their operations and their levels of legality. We interviewed people who adopted the role of librarians in their unique ways. From these experiences, we started outlining our workshop.

The workshop "Knowledge in Action" invites participants to act the roles and perform the activities crucial to the sustenance of libraries. They interpret and reimagine the actors that take part in knowledge production and distribution, playing the parts of the librarian, the researcher, the pirate, the publisher, the reader, the writer, the student, the copyist, the printer. The activities embed the participants in different scenarios to shift their accustomed perspective and to start common dialogues.

Intro for Leeszaal interview

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 suprised by the amount of books that travel in and out of this place, the flexibility of not having to catalogue incoming books to fullest details. For example, a looser notion of category is used here, compared to research libraries. 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.

Intro for Dubravka interview

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 topic of extra-legal libraries.

Dubravka Sekulić is an architect, writer and researcher focusing on the topics of transformation of contemporary cities, at the nexus between 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 realtime catalog of shared libraries through Calibre.