User:Simon/Trim4/Thesis outline third draft
From XPUB & Lens-Based wiki
TASKS OF THE CONTINGENT LIBRARIAN
1. ACQUIRING TEXTS
- why do we need texts? what is their function?
- technology of language and its evolution through orality > literacy
- preservation of memory - language inscribed in oral traditions, and in writing
- social - the recollection of this memory forms narratives that constitutes subjectivity
- ways of reading: browsing vs searching, skimming vs scanning
- access to texts (or lack thereof) - where do they come from?
- copyright law and authorship - Eva Weinmayr’s essay
- technical methods of digitising printed texts
- scanning, processing text, redesigning, reprinting, make-do workflows
- personal experience of using libraries?
2. CLASSIFYING AND CATALOGUING THEM
- aspects of classification
- social, linguistic, semiotic, political
- collections of texts
- professional, amateur, critical librarianship practices and how they relate to these aspects
- what connects the books and the readers
- how does locality relate to the collection?
- proximity
- in the infrastructure of the library (the catalogue, the shelves, the folders, the interface)
3. MAKING TEXTS ACCESSIBLE
- conversion between formats for diverse reading needs
- knowledge distribution methods and networks (distinction between digital and analog methods is blurry as they are often combined)
- social
- governmental
- copyright law and its restrictions on distribution of knowledge
- municipal
- public libraries, social initatives (e.g. Leeszaal)
- pirate
- bootlegging, samizdat, warez, zine culture, unofficial/uncatalogued publications
- locality
- making it public vs making it private - the survival of the library
- pirate vs commercial models - what’s at stake?
4. CREATING A SYMBOLIC LINK BETWEEN TEXTS AND READERS
- Why?
- the sociability of libraries
- bootlegging and unofficial publishing practices
- the symbolic (Lacan’s example of a door and its uses outside of binary open/closed)
