How Do We Library That?

• 

  Tasks of the Contingent Librarian (2020)

• 

  Making a Common Index Zine at the Hold and Release Partyline (2022)

• 

  k!words Conversation Map from Keleketla! Library (2021)

• 

  HyperCard, a pre-web hypermedia system released by Apple Macintosh (1987)

• 

  A moment for Temporary Indexing at Varia (2021)

• 

  The digital bootleg library

• 

  Jumbie Library, Trinidad & Tobago

• 

  Leeszaal Rotterdam West

• 

  Marginal Conversations annotation pack

Context

Libraries are complex social infrastructures. It's difficult to describe them without speaking in the generic plural "libraries", or specific singular "a library/the library"; as if they were all the same. Universalisms won't help in understanding what is particular about libraries and collections of texts, or why they have value to their readers.

Public libraries function more than simply as access points to knowledge. They facilitate many social actions; including reading together, annotating, organising and structuring. As public libraries vanish, shadow and fugitive libraries appear in their wake. The structure and shape of what we may call libraries, books, or text radically changes, yet we lack an adequate vocabulary to describe them without falling back on generics.

Special Issue 19

How can we understand a library-in-the-making, and make it understandable to others? What are points and ways of access, and where do readers cross over? How can we understand its materiality and textuality?

In a 2019 interview, researcher and architect Dubravka Sekulić asks, "what is useful knowledge for people to understand what surrounds them? Or for example, what can help to understand the politics of knowledge distribution". It is clear that what we need is to understand "how to offer people tools that allow them to interpret the position in which they are".

We will discover libraries as:

• distribution networks
• sets of practices
• sites of cultural literacy
• sites of production
• sites of learning
• social spaces of text

We will begin with searching for proposals around how we "do" libraries together. We will question indices and indexical attitudes that point toward universalisms, and discover in the process a library-in-the-making.

Rather than looking only at what a library stores, we will also discover what it produces. We will consider collections as not only comprised of things, but also people and actions. In other words, we will attempt to collectively and individually answer the question "How do we library that?".

Schedule

One: Tasks of the Contingent Librarian

Summary: Contingent librarianship - an ever-growing set of actions

Monday, September 19th, 2022

11:00-17:30 Introduction to the Special Issue (with Simon)

Pad:

To introduce ourselves we will use cards from Tasks of the Contingent Librarian:

• 52 cards on the table (e.g. bootlegging, indexing, scanning, reading, technologising the word, &c)
• Choose a card that matches your curiosities and/or interests
• Exchange a card with someone else, describing how you relate to the card
• Exchange a card, relate that relation to someone else

• Make a new card, what information does it need?

Tuesday, September 20th, 2022

11:00-17:30 Prototyping with Manetta & Joseph

Pad:

Wednesday September 21st, 2022

11:00-17:30 Introduction to Methods with Steve

Pad:

Two: Print Screen

Summary: Plain text & annotation, from markup to markdown

Monday, September 26th, 2022

Pad:

Tuesday, September 27th, 2022

11:00-17:30 Prototyping with Manetta & Joseph

Pad:

Wednesday September 28th, 2022

11:00-17:30 Methods with Steve

Pad:

Three: Text, TBC

Monday, October 3rd, 2022

Pad:

Tuesday, October 4th, 2022

11:00-17:30 Prototyping with Manetta & Joseph

Pad:

Wednesday October 5th, 2022

11:00-17:30 Methods with Steve

Pad:

Four: Scribes Getting Personal ☞

Monday, October 10th, 2022

Pad:

Tuesday, October 11th, 2022

11:00-17:30 Prototyping with Manetta & Joseph

Pad:

Wednesday October 12th, 2022

11:00-17:30 Methods with Steve

Pad:

Five: Do e-books dream of electronic spreadsheets?

Monday, October 17th, 2022

Pad:

Tuesday, October 18th, 2022

11:00-17:30 Prototyping with Manetta & Joseph

Pad:

Wednesday October 19th, 2022

11:00-17:30 Methods with Steve

Pad:

🍁🍁🍁

Autumn Vacation

Six: Binding Along the Spine

Monday, October 31st, 2022

Pad:

Tuesday, November 1st, 2022

11:00-17:30 Prototyping with Manetta & Joseph

Pad:

Wednesday November 2nd, 2022

11:00-17:30 Methods with Steve

Pad:

Seven: A Textile, A Framework

Monday, November 7th, 2022

Pad:

Tuesday, November 8th, 2022

11:00-17:30 Prototyping with Manetta & Joseph

Pad:

Wednesday November 9th, 2022

11:00-17:30 Methods with Steve

Pad:

Eight: Paper Machines

Monday, November 14th, 2022

References:

• https://wintermute.org/project/Rustic_Computing/

Pad:

Tuesday, November 15th, 2022

11:00-17:30 Prototyping with Manetta & Joseph

Pad:

Wednesday November 16th, 2022

11:00-17:30 Methods with Steve

Pad:

Nine: Readable, Writeable, Executable

Monday, November 21st, 2022

Pad:

Tuesday, November 22nd, 2022

11:00-17:30 Prototyping with Manetta & Joseph

Pad:

Wednesday November 23rd, 2022

11:00-17:30 Methods with Steve

Pad:

Ten

Monday, November 28th, 2022

Pad:

Tuesday, November 29th, 2022

11:00-17:30 Prototyping with Manetta & Joseph

Pad:

Wednesday November 30th, 2022

11:00-17:30 Methods with Steve

Pad:

Eleven

Monday, December 5th, 2022

Pad:

Tuesday, December 6th, 2022

11:00-17:30 Prototyping with Manetta & Joseph

Pad:

Wednesday December 7th, 2022

11:00-17:30 Methods with Steve

Pad:

Twelve

Monday, December 12th, 2022

Pad:

Tuesday, December 13th, 2022

11:00-17:30 Prototyping with Manetta & Joseph

Pad:

Wednesday December 14th, 2022

11:00-17:30 Methods with Steve

Pad: