How Do We Library That?
[File:keleketla-kwords.png|300px]
Background
Libraries do much more than simply give access to knowledge; they produce sociality. The sharing of texts is a fundamentally social practice, bringing readers, writers and editors together in an exchange of positions, ideas, knowledge and know-how. So, libraries are more than just collections of texts, or the place in which they are kept. They are places where many actions are performed, including reading together, annotating, organising and structuring.
Despite this, public libraries continue to close all over the world, replaced by self-service systems where librarians are considered an unnecessary cost. In response, come a radical index of fugitive and shadow libraries to fill the gaps.
Special Issue 19
We will begin with searching for proposals that answer important questions around how we do libraries. 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". We want to think about "how to offer people tools that allow them to interpret the position in which they are".
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?", approaching a particular, situated library-in-the-making as a set of collective actions that sustain it.
Schedule
Week 1:
Monday, September 19th, 2022
11:00-13:00 Introducing SI19
14:00-17:30 Introduction to Prototyping
Tuesday, September 20th, 2022
11:00-18:00 Prototyping with Manetta & Joseph
Week 2
Monday, September 26th, 2022
Week 3
Monday, October 3rd, 2022
Week 4
Monday, October 10th, 2022
Week 5
Monday, October 17th, 2022
Week 6
Autumn Vacation
Week 7
Monday, October 31st, 2022
Week 8
Monday, November 7th, 2022
Week 9
Monday, November 14th, 2022
Week 10
Monday, November 21st, 2022
Week 11
Monday, November 28th, 2022
Week 12
Monday, December 5th, 2022
Week 13
Monday, December 12th, 2022