How Do We Library That?
Tasks of the Contingent Librarian (2020)
Making a Common Index Zine at the Hold and Release Partyline (2022)
k!words Conversation Map from Keleketla! Library (2021)
HyperCard, a pre-web hypermedia system released by Apple Macintosh (1987)
A moment for Temporary Indexing at Varia (2021)
The digital bootleg library
Jumbie Library at Alice Yard, Trinidad & Tobago
Leeszaal Rotterdam West
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
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 ☞
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: Gardening the Library
Monday, October 17th, 2022
Another day in the Varia library (Gouwstraat 3), with Simon
Pad: https://pad.xpub.nl/p/SP19_22-10-17
Tuesday, October 18th, 2022
11:00-17:30 Prototyping with Manetta & Joseph
Python, House of dust, generating cards in HTML, git
Pad: https://pad.xpub.nl/p/SI19-prototyping-5
Wednesday October 19th, 2022
11:00-17:30 Reading, Writing and Research Methodologies with Steve
Pad: https://pad.xpub.nl/p/Methods19Oct22
🍁🍁🍁
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
Pad:
Wednesday November 2nd, 2022
11:00-17:30 Reading, Writing and Research Methodologies with Steve
Pad:
Seven: Binding Along the Spine
Summary: Digital and analog binding
Monday, November 7th, 2022
Pad:
Tuesday, November 8th, 2022
11:00-17:30 Prototyping with Manetta & Joseph
Pad:
Wednesday November 9th, 2022
11:00-17:30 Reading, Writing and Research Methodologies with Steve
Pad:
Eight: A Textile, A Framework
Summary: Weaving texts together
Monday, November 14th, 2022
Pad:
Tuesday, November 15th, 2022
11:00-17:30 Prototyping with Manetta & Joseph
Pad:
Wednesday November 16th, 2022
11:00-17:30 Reading, Writing and Research Methodologies with Steve
Pad:
Nine: Paper Machines
Monday, November 21st, 2022
Summary: Analog interfaces for digital collections
Pad:
Tuesday, November 22nd, 2022
11:00-17:30 Prototyping with Manetta & Joseph
Pad:
Wednesday November 23rd, 2022
11:00-17:30 Reading, Writing and Research Methodologies with Steve
Pad:
Ten: Writing Machines
Monday, November 28th, 2022
Pad:
Tuesday, November 29th, 2022
11:00-17:30 Prototyping with Manetta & Joseph
Pad:
Wednesday November 30th, 2022
11:00-17:30 Reading, Writing and Research Methodologies with Steve
Pad:
Eleven: A Release
Monday, December 5th, 2022
Pad:
Tuesday, December 6th, 2022
11:00-17:30 Prototyping with Manetta & Joseph
Pad:
Wednesday December 7th, 2022
11:00-17:30 Reading, Writing and Research Methodologies with Steve
Pad: