User:Rita Graca/readingwriting3

Introduction to Shadow Libraries

Abstract (Library Genesis)

Library Genesis is a digital library with a catalog of more than 25 million documents. The website owners describe themselves as “random book collectors”, which means they don’t accept requests or focus on curating materials. The topics are broad: from business, economy, and geology to housekeeping and leisure. The dimension of this library is enormous, there are even several copies of the same books. The content is mostly written material.
Although this huge library seems to take information without any specific methodology, the reasons don’t seem completely apolitical. The main page of the website links to a letter of solidarity with strong opinions on sharing materials, copyright, moral values, etc.
All people are encouraged to upload content and to download it too. There’s no score to maintain, log-in necessary, or price to pay. The desire of the platform to exist is well seen in the possibility of downloading all content, accessing the database and making mirrors.

Group reflection and questions

What could be the motivation to make such a library? What is the message they might be trying to spread?
The scale, the amount of data provided in a library is directly related to the energy and time needed to provide them.
How is responsibility distributed ?
How are shadow libraries of different scales and purposes interconnected?
Are shadow libraries interconnected to each other, even if they have different scales and purposes, because what they have in common is that they brake the law (so they are vulnerable)?
flag of convenience
Do they have moral goals, or anarchist goals? Is an anarchist goal immoral (or moral)?
Symbolic gesture
Is it a solidarity gesture?
You can copy the website and mirror it. They don't claim ownership
Is there a heroic attitude of "liberating" knowledge? (robin hood style)
What values does it communicate?
Can these values be seen as coming from a particular cultural context (e.g. post-Communist, Eastern-bloc samzidat techniques)?
Is it moral to publish books which have a commercial goal?
Is the librarian replaced by a random algorithm?
Is there a librarian?
Who is responsible and what are they responsible for?
Non-curation can be a critical position; it is nort imposing a particular position.
Are they collecting material just because they can?
Yes! No filters;
Is this dissident activity?
They don't care a lot about the quality, everything is welcome. Duplicated material
Do they try to curate doubled material?
Why is it easier to support piracy for academic research than for recreational purposes?
Distinctions between "knowledge" and "information" / Democratic principle of sharing knowledge in the name of progress / Providing a benefit to society What are the conditions of making something legitimate? (if we shift back to copyright - see also bootleg drugs,)
benefit for the greater good? is it based on profit?
What would be the first shadow library to be considered legitimate?
Why can't a fiction book (or anything besides articles) be considered research, culture, important to share, meaningful...?

First outline of the workshops

Most of the subjects that we have been working on (such as piracy, file-sharing, and shadow libraries) work outside the law. Although illegal, sharing academic books seems to be morally acceptable by most of us. But what happens if we are studying Cinema, and watching a film becomes our research? Is it different to download a book or a song?

Aim:

Invite people to make choices to start a conversation on what we find moral, immoral, ethical, what we perceive as knowledge, role of pirate libraries, the importance of sharing the culture...
Talk about these activities in a group, shed light upon these issues
Because what is moral/immoral is so personal, some interesting confrontations can happen
The place where the workshops will happen is important. It would be interesting to go outside the artist/activist bubble and have diverse opinions.

But that can also be my role, to be the devil's advocate and ask more provoking questions.

Practical example:

Conversation starters where you divide the participants based on a question: "Move right if you think stealing a book is different than downloading it", "Move back if you don't know what the legal implications of downloading a file are", "If you'd write a book, would you consider distributing it for free?", etc.

Is important to start with easy questions to set an entry point for the workshop and to get a sense of the practical knowledge of the participants (I found difficult in the launch of the special issue 8 to start explaining my research because I didn't know how much the person knew about networks, if they were very informed or not at all)
(Possible inspiration: "A day in the courtroom" by Eva Weinmayr; "Middle ground"; "Conditional design workbook")

New Knowledge: through the discussions between the participants. But how does my knowledge, what we learned, gets visible?

How is annotation being discussed here?

We can annotate the discussion: with other questions that come up, answers, notes... what could be an interesting way of doing this?
Thinking besides written notes
If this discussion is recorded then annotated on, several layers can be put together.
The workshop shouldn't be the end point, but the starting point of the annotation

The questions should be related to the set of texts we are using as a group, quoting books, films, etc.

How to document the workshop?

The annotations seem to be an important part of the documentation.

How will people interface with my project?

Interview with Leeszaal librarians Laura and Ronny

transcription: https://pad.xpub.nl/p/IFL_2019-06-04-selection-transcription
editing: https://beta.etherpad.org/p/librarian_interview