User:Rita Graca/specialissue9

Introduction to Shadow Libraries

In the first class of this trimester, we (XPUB) were introduced to a big collection of shadow libraries. Each library seems to follow a different path: distinct methods for cataloging, an idea of what the role of the librarian should be, a specific user interface, etc.

We looked into Aaaaarg, Ubu, Project Gutenberg, Library Genesis, Clockwise libraries, Memory of the world, Monoskop, Bilbiotecha and The Piratebay.

We tried to answer some questions:

   Content: What is in the library? How much?
   Users: Who is using / uploading / downloading?
   Catalog: What is the system? How is it organized? How about its ontology?
   Infrastructure: What are the technical specs? Software? Hardware?
   Politics: What is the attitude?
   Economy: Sponsors? Donation? Advertising?
   Law: How does it interface?

Pedro and I looked into Library Genesis and .Onion libraries. However, we were browsing some websites for the first time. After Bodó workshop, we learned a lot more about LibGen, and how some of our first impressions were wrong.

Library Genesis

Content: What is in the library? How much?
In 2014 it had 25 million documents (42 terabytes)?

Users: Who is using / uploading / downloading?
(Balázs Bodó input: everyone. It seems that not only the countries with less access to expensive books use this library. There's a lot of activity from high income North American and European countries, they are the biggest per capita users.)

Catalog: What is the system? How is it organized? How about its ontology?
You can search by topics, or by genre (fiction, comics, etc.)
An index list is provided in each category
No curation, everything seems valid. From their FAQ: "we are random book collectors: if we see a book somewhere and it's not in LG yet, we take it.", "We do not fetch specific books, we rather gather collections from public zones on the Web."
(BB input: the focus of the library depends on the kind of archives being dumped, by year, language, etc. e.g pre-2011 was Russian and academic work, mostly natural sciences and mathematics. And actually, there are not many downloads of fiction work.)
Uploading is advertised as being very easy, a lot of duplicated material? (BB input: actually LibGen works more with batch-uploads, big quantities of files being upload from one source, rather than one-book-only upload by a random user)

Infrastructure: What are the technical specs? Software? Hardware?
Russian servers?

Politics: What is the attitude?
They seem to distance themselves from the idea of bringing academic research for people without access/ Sci-Hub
"If you are from India, Pakistan or Iran, you may have difficulties with finances and be tempted to place such requests, then this answer is for you. There may exist some sites on the net that can help you find certain books upon request, but we simply cannot do this. If you need the book urgently and it's missing in LG, please, do not rely on us and try to get it from some other place."

Economy: Sponsors? Donation? Advertising?
No sponsors or donations visible on the website, nor in the site map or forum.
Advertise on download
In Reddit you can find a board (https://www.reddit.com/r/libgen/comments/2m2m1p/libgen_needs_donations_for_a_new_server/) where they have asked for a donation in bitcoin to buy a new server

Law: How does it interface?
...

.Onion Libraries

Content: What is in the library? How much?
Much less content, curatorial side, a small list of books, focused on one/two categories. libraryqtlpitkix is focused on the sciences.

Users: Who is using / uploading / downloading?
You have to access them through a different kind of browser, we used Tor. It's hard to find them by chance, there must be an effort to see these libraries. very specific are these book hard to find in libgen? rare findings?

Catalog: What is the system? How is it organized? How about its ontology?
Different kinds of organization, either in one page with scroll list that fits In a warezy way, with directories, all stored and organized together

Infrastructure: What are the technical specs? Software? Hardware?
...

Politics: What is the attitude?
Economy: Sponsors? Donation? Advertising?

Law: How does it interface?
...

More: https://pad.xpub.nl/p/IFL_introductions

Workshops

Balázs Bodó

See pads:
https://pad.xpub.nl/p/IFL_bodobalasz
https://pad.xpub.nl/p/libgen_top10