User:)biyibiyibiyi(/Special Issue 09

Shadow Libraries

<reading notes from Shadow Libraries: Access to knowledge in global higher education>

Annotation

classification of knowledge

Mundaneum, Universal Decimal Classification System, SISO Digital Library, Chinese Library Classification System (in which we witness certain categories are prioritized for ideological representation.)

Practice intersects community

starting point, motivations

Interest in excavating history of Katendrecht, being once a red light district and Chinatown. Still many Chinese immigrants live here, I identified them by these ways:

1.coming across them in public spaces, such as on the street, in the Asian supermarket Amazing Oriental. A lady working in Amazing Oriental once spoke to me asking if I the bread I bought that day was Turkish bread. As I live on Katendrecht for several months now I brewed a curiosity towards people working in the supermarket, despite my limited interaction with them.

2.encountering with their private spaces. On a frequent basis I discover Chinese last names on the post boxes, as I took walks after dinner. I see a Chinese family water their plants on the balcony.

3.semi-public, semi-private place, which is the Chinese church on Katendrecht. I see people gathering there for events, and there are posters outside about afternoon tea sessions. I thought I would like to invite the community to do something with me than the population from the church might be a good place to establish a network?

4. misc. As I participated in Angeliki's workshop the yesterday (23-05-2019), she told me that in Leeszaal west, some Chinese immigrant females go there. Her workshop inspired me in her way of how she worked with people. Several tips include confronting the fear of "I am the artist who is going to appropriate other people in my work", and be open and clear while proposing work plans/intentions to invitees.

News

996, ICU

996, ICU is a project initiated by Chinese programmers to speak about their work conditions. I brought up this project during initial conceptualizing session for the event launch. Tancredi brought up working with the Git structure to upload annotations. The git workflow will be explicit in retaining versions of different versions of annotations, showing which user had contributed what content, tracking changes, etc. In prototyping session, we also worked with EPUB file structure, it is composed of HTML files when unzipped. We imagined a collective annotation reader stored in a git repository, as separated files of HTML. I presented and talked about 996, ICU during class as an example of Git used as a social space to afford collective interactions. The Git software is particular powerful at recording authors and alterations made to files, making public of the provenance of these voices (in context of 996, ICU it's the voice of the programmers). Eventually we didn't pursue on working with this particular direction, however I want to write down the outline of 996 ICU and how the project hold relevance to what's being discussed during the course.

996 is short for going to work from nine in the morning, getting off work at nine in the evening, on six days per week. ICU is short for the emergency room. In the Chinese tech industry, there had been numerous cases of employees overworked to severe states health failures and death. To name the project 996, ICU is to call attention to labor condition of the tech workers.

996 ICU's page published citations from the Chinese Labor Law, which demanded limitations on work hours and overtime compensation if excess hours are needed. It is regulated that workers work less than 8 hours a day, and no more than 44 hours per week. If overtime work hours is needed per purposes of production, it is to be discussed with trade unions and laborers and be compensated accordingly.

The policies outlined by Labor Law is not carried out in practice. On the contrary companies had openly adopted 996 working models, treating as the unofficial, de facto rule to abide to. To claim 996 as a working schedule is to assign it with credibility and authority, uphold to it, promote it as industry standard.