How Do We Library That?
Background
Libraries are complex social infrastructures. Libraries do more than simply give access to knowledge. The sharing of texts is a social practice, bringing readers, writers and editors together in an exchange of positions, ideas, approaches and know-how. Libraries are more than just collections of texts, or containers in which they are kept. They are places where many actions are performed, including reading together, annotating, organising and structuring.
Special Issue 19
What is the minimally viable library?
What are its parts?
On which points does the library diverge, or converge?
When do texts become new?
How to sustain a library?
We will begin with searching for proposals for important questions around how we "do" libraries together. We will question indices and indexical attitudes that point toward universalisms, and discover in the process our library-in-the-making.
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".
Libraries as:
- distribution networks
- sets of practices
- sites of cultural literacy
- sites of production
- sites of learning
- social spaces of text
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
Monday, September 19th, 2022
11:00-17:30 Introduction to the Special Issue (with Simon)
Pad:
Including:
- "A game of cards": 52 cards on the table (e.g. bootlegging, indexing, scanning, reading, technologizing the word etc) Tasks of the Contingent Librarian
- 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
11:00-18:00 Prototyping with Manetta & Joseph
Pad:
Wednesday September 21st, 2022
11:00-18:00 Introduction to Methods with Steve
Two: Print Screen
Monday, September 26th, 2022
Pad:
Tuesday, September 20th, 2022
11:00-18:00 Prototyping with Manetta & Joseph
Pad:
Wednesday September 21st, 2022
11:00-18:00 Methods with Steve
Three: Text, TBC
Monday, October 3rd, 2022
Pad:
Tuesday, September 20th, 2022
11:00-18:00 Prototyping with Manetta & Joseph
Pad:
Wednesday September 21st, 2022
11:00-18:00 Methods with Steve
Four: Scribes Getting Personal ☞
Monday, October 10th, 2022
Pad:
Tuesday, September 20th, 2022
11:00-18:00 Prototyping with Manetta & Joseph
Pad:
Wednesday September 21st, 2022
11:00-18:00 Methods with Steve
Five: Do e-books dream of electronic spreadsheets?
Monday, October 17th, 2022
Pad:
Tuesday, September 20th, 2022
11:00-18:00 Prototyping with Manetta & Joseph
Pad:
Wednesday September 21st, 2022
11:00-18:00 Methods with Steve
🍁🍁🍁
Autumn Vacation
Six: Binding Along the Spine
Monday, October 31st, 2022
Pad:
Tuesday, September 20th, 2022
11:00-18:00 Prototyping with Manetta & Joseph
Pad:
Wednesday September 21st, 2022
11:00-18:00 Methods with Steve
Seven: A Textile, A Framework
Monday, November 7th, 2022
Pad:
Tuesday, September 20th, 2022
11:00-18:00 Prototyping with Manetta & Joseph
Pad:
Wednesday September 21st, 2022
11:00-18:00 Methods with Steve
Eight: Paper Computing
Monday, November 14th, 2022
Pad:
Tuesday, September 20th, 2022
11:00-18:00 Prototyping with Manetta & Joseph
Pad:
Wednesday September 21st, 2022
11:00-18:00 Methods with Steve
Nine
Monday, November 21st, 2022
Pad:
Tuesday, September 20th, 2022
11:00-18:00 Prototyping with Manetta & Joseph
Pad:
Wednesday September 21st, 2022
11:00-18:00 Methods with Steve
Ten
Monday, November 28th, 2022
Pad:
Tuesday, September 20th, 2022
11:00-18:00 Prototyping with Manetta & Joseph
Pad:
Wednesday September 21st, 2022
11:00-18:00 Methods with Steve
Eleven
Monday, December 5th, 2022
Pad:
Tuesday, September 20th, 2022
11:00-18:00 Prototyping with Manetta & Joseph
Pad:
Wednesday September 21st, 2022
11:00-18:00 Methods with Steve
Twelve
Monday, December 12th, 2022
Pad:
Tuesday, September 20th, 2022
11:00-18:00 Prototyping with Manetta & Joseph
Pad:
Wednesday September 21st, 2022
11:00-18:00 Methods with Steve