How Do We Library That?

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  Tasks of the Contingent Librarian (2020)

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

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

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

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  A moment for Temporary Indexing at Varia (2021)

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  The digital bootleg library

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  Jumbie Library at Alice Yard, Trinidad & Tobago

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  Leeszaal Rotterdam West

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  Marginal Conversations annotation pack (2019)

Context

Libraries are complex social infrastructures. It's difficult to describe them without using the plural "libraries", or 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 their value to their readers.

Public libraries are more than just access points to knowledge. They are social sites where readers cross over while reading together, annotating, organising and structuring. These places are slowly fading away, threatened by a business logic that sees them as just containers for files and books. But as public libraries are replaced by self-service software and paywalls, shadow and fugitive libraries appear in their wake, founded upon values of local community, cultural literacy and open access.

What might be called a library, a book or a text has radically changed in the post-digital age. A text could be editorial (a sequence), technical (a process), social (a framework). A book could be bound at the spine, or an electronic file gathered together with digital binding. A library could be an accumulated stack of printed books, a modular collection of software packages, a method of distributing e-books, a writing machine, and so on, and so on.

Special Issue 19

In this Special Issue, we will start by considering the word "library" as a verb; actions that sustains the production, collection and distribution of texts. We will question indexical attitudes that lean towards universalisms and search for proposals for how we "library" our particular collection.

How are texts made new? How to make a collection understandable to others? What are the access points to the collection, and where do readers and writers cross paths?

Rather than looking only at what a library stores, we will also think about what it produces. We will begin at the level of text, experimenting with personal and collective methods of recording and distributing individual notes and thoughts, alongside their organisation into collections. We will look into library spaces, opening boxes and opening texts, finding moments of surprise and seeds of inspiration that deserve to be shared and linked. We will explore librarying as sets of actions that produce; writing machines, networks of accumulated practices and distribution methods, sites of cultural literacy and learning, social spaces of text.

Guest Editor

Simon Browne is an artist, researcher and self-proclaimed "contingent librarian"; convenient shorthand for the caretaking of an ever-expanding list of collective actions. He is the initiator of the bootleg library, a digital/physical/social collection of texts. His work engages with the social dimension of publishing, free software and infrastructure that supports interpersonal knowledge-sharing networks. Simon lives and works in Rotterdam, where he is active as a member of Varia, a collective-space for everyday technology.

Schedule

One: Tasks of the Contingent Librarian

Summary: Contingent librarianship - opening up a set of actions

Monday, September 19th, 2022

11:00-17:30 Introduction to the Special Issue with Simon in the Aquarium

Pad: https://pad.xpub.nl/p/SP19_22-09-19

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, et cetera)
• Choose 3 cards that match your curiosities and interests
• Exchange a card with someone, describing how you relate to the task
• Pass on the card you received to a new person, describe the relationship you heard about
• Take notes on what you hear, paying attention to the note-taking method and interface (e.g. pen/paper, laptop) you choose

Assignment for next week:

• Make a new task card. What information does it need to be legible to someone else?
• Pad: https://pad.xpub.nl/p/cards_in_bags_20220922

Tuesday, September 20th, 2022

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

Pad: https://pad.xpub.nl/p/SI19-prototyping-1

Install ourselves into XPUB, sandboxes, servers, web servers, Hello World!

Booklet: File:Install-myself-in-the-sandbox.pdf

Wednesday September 21st, 2022

11:00-17:00 Introduction to Reading, Writing and Research Methodologies with Steve

Le Guin, acacia seeds and un-naming.

Pad: https://pad.xpub.nl/p/LeGuinAcaciaSeeds

NotesWedSeshOne

Two: Print Screen

Summary: Plain text & annotation, from markup to markdown

Monday, September 26th, 2022

With Simon in the Aquarium, Print & Publication Station & XML

Pad: https://pad.xpub.nl/p/SP19_22-09-26

Assignment for next week: Edit your vosk-transcribed text to make it legible to an uninitiated reader.

Pad: https://pad.xpub.nl/p/SP19_Print_Screen_transcriptions

Tuesday, September 27th, 2022

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

the internet, the web, mark up that text

Pad: https://pad.xpub.nl/p/SI19-prototyping-2

Three: Text, TBC

Summary: Dimensions of text - editorial, technical, social

With Simon in the Aquarium, Kunstkelder and Research Station (introduced by Wilma Knol)

Monday, October 3rd, 2022

Pad: https://pad.xpub.nl/p/SP19_22-10-03

Assignment for next week:

We use a short section of the audio recording of Wilma (we liked the part where she describes the box with the ornamental garden inside, and also the part when she remembered the two students/staff who borrowed the Philip Guston book).

In groups of two people, make the recording legible, as text. How you choose to do this is up to you and your partner, but think about how to make it legible to each other. What happens when you begin to edit and organise the text, how does it fit into a bigger system that may include other texts?

You can use any method or media you like (digital text, printed matter, pen and paper also ok). Make a minimum of 1, maximum of 5 "cards" from the text, and bring them to Varia next week.

Tuesday, October 4th, 2022

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

Pad: https://pad.xpub.nl/p/SI19-prototyping-3

Wednesday October 5th, 2022

11:00-17:30 Reading, Writing and Research Methodologies with Steve

Pad:https://pad.xpub.nl/p/Methods5Oct22

Four: Scribes Getting Personal ☞ (part I)

Summary: different ways to indicate/index/point to things

Monday, October 10th, 2022

A day at the Varia library (Gouwstraat 3, Rotterdam) with Simon

Pad: https://pad.xpub.nl/p/SP19_22-10-10

Assignment for next week:

Devise a proof of concept for your "HTML gardening". Next week we meet again at Varia to materialise the outcomes.

Tuesday, October 11th, 2022

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

Pad: https://pad.xpub.nl/p/SI19-prototyping-4

Five: Scribes Getting Personal ☞ (part II)

Monday, October 17th, 2022

Another day in the Varia library (Gouwstraat 3), with Simon

Pad:

Tuesday, October 18th, 2022

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

Pad:

Wednesday October 19th, 2022

11:00-17:30 Reading, Writing and Research Methodologies with Steve

Pad:

🍁🍁🍁

Monday 24th October to Friday 28th October, 2022

Autumn Vacation

Six: Do ebooks dream of electronic spreadsheets?

Summary: Logics of databases

Monday, October 31st, 2022

Pad:

Tuesday, November 1st, 2022

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

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Wednesday November 2nd, 2022

11:00-17:30 Reading, Writing and Research Methodologies with Steve

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Seven: Binding Along the Spine

Summary: Digital and analog binding

Monday, November 7th, 2022

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Tuesday, November 8th, 2022

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

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Wednesday November 9th, 2022

11:00-17:30 Reading, Writing and Research Methodologies with Steve

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Eight: A Textile, A Framework

Summary: Weaving texts together

Monday, November 14th, 2022

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Tuesday, November 15th, 2022

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

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Wednesday November 16th, 2022

11:00-17:30 Reading, Writing and Research Methodologies with Steve

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Nine: Paper Machines

Monday, November 21st, 2022

Summary: Analog interfaces for digital collections

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Tuesday, November 22nd, 2022

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

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Wednesday November 23rd, 2022

11:00-17:30 Reading, Writing and Research Methodologies with Steve

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Ten: Writing Machines

Monday, November 28th, 2022

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Tuesday, November 29th, 2022

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

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Wednesday November 30th, 2022

11:00-17:30 Reading, Writing and Research Methodologies with Steve

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Eleven: A Release

Monday, December 5th, 2022

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Tuesday, December 6th, 2022

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

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Wednesday December 7th, 2022

11:00-17:30 Reading, Writing and Research Methodologies with Steve

Pad: