User:Bohye Woo/RW&RM 02

Wednesday 17 April

• Content : What is in the library? How much?
• Users: Who is using / uploading / downloading?
• Catalog: What is the system? How is it organised? How about its ontology?
• Infrastructure: What are technical specs? Software? Hardware?
• Politics: What is the attitude?
• Economy: Sponsors? Donation? Advertising?
• Law: How does it interface?

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MEMORY OF THE WORLD https://www.memoryoftheworld.org/

• Content : What is in the library? How much?

   136241 books, 16 shown
   Have books 50s - 90s
   Politics-History-Theory, Eastern European, post-communism 
   Scanned and uploaded books from "librarians" of this library
   Plugin, that you could share from calibre, your local network's library 

• Catalog: What is the system? How is it organised? How about its ontology?

   Using Callibre
   Listed by format/title/tag/date
   Book on their server?

Abstract

Memory of the World is a web-based public library, where you find books in PDFs, ePUB provided by the individual online librarians. The library concentrate on the subject of politics-history theory, eastern European, post-communism between 50s and 90s indexed by author, title, tag, date and format. Currently, there are 136,255 books available from 19 librarians online on the web, it might change when more librarians join the network or when they loose the connection. It has the vision that the world’s documentary heritage belongs to all, should be fully preserved and protected for all and, with due recognition of cultural mores and practicalities, should be permanently accessible to all without hindrance. When the librarians are online, you can access to the so-called "a personal digital library" where they randomly share the selection of books. The selection of books are depending on the librarian's choice, which they provides information such as title, authors, publisher, and small description with PDFs or EPUB. The library is publicly open, although the librarian's personal information are perfectly secured. You can use a plugin shared from Calibre, an open-source suite of e-book software, from their local network's library.

Questions

Who does the library serve?
What does ownership and curatorship mean in a shadow library?
How does it make a difference to transfer the role and the presence of a "librarian" into a web library?
Does the background of the librarian affect the content presented on a library?
Who does the library serve?
What could be the motivation to make such a library?
What values does it communicate?
Who is responsible and what are they responsible for?
What is it filtered out and what are the political implications of that?

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MONOSKOP https://monoskop.org/

    Monoskop Wiki: selection of different themes
   Monoskop Log: is a digital library of arts and humanities. 

   like a wikipedia page
   avant-gardes, media arts and theory and activism
   a blog repository featuring 

Monoskop is a wiki, and a repository aggregating, documenting and mapping works, artists and intiatives related to the avant-gardes, media arts and theory and activism. Initially it focused on Eastern and Central Europe. Built on a Wiki that everyone can contribute to and scrupulously curated by its spiritus movens Dušan Barok, it provides both an exhaustive, indexical overview of those fields and provides digital access to rare historic finds. In parallel to the wiki, Monoskop maintains a blog repository featuring daily releases of books, journals or other printed archival material, some digitized by Monoskop and some contributed by the users, authors and publishers. Pdfs are available to download, while there are also links to other shadow libraries which host this content.

Pdfs available to download, also redirecting in other (public) libraries that host this content

Monoskop & copyright https://monoskop.org/About_Monoskop#Copyrights

Abstract

Monoskop is a Wiki and a Log (repository), aggregating, documenting and mapping works, artists and initiatives related to the avant-gardes, media arts, theory and activism. Initially it focused on Eastern and Central Europe. Built on a Wiki that everyone can contribute to and thoroughly curated by Dušan Barok, who initiated the project, Monoskop provides both an exhaustive, indexical overview of studies of art, media and the humanities, and provides digital access to rare historic finds. In parallel to the Wiki, Monoskop maintains a blog repository featuring daily releases of books, journals or other printed archival material, some digitized by Monoskop and some contributed by the users, authors and publishers. Pdfs are available to download directly, but there are also links to other shadow libraries, which host relevant content. Monoskop runs on MediaWiki software, and is hosted by the Sanchez free art server, maintained by Multiplace. The largest part of the content is formed by top 500 thematic tags from Monoskop Log, each linking full-text publications, mostly books, while some themes also have dedicated wiki pages. The 100 persons--artists, makers and writers--are linked to wiki pages consisted primarily from chronologies and bibliographies of their work, some accompanied with biographies.

Questions

Who does the library serve?
What could be the motivation to make such a library?
What values does it communicate?
How is it different if you can participate in editing the content of a library, compared to just be a viewer-receiver of the content?
How is it valuable to have carefully and thoroughly edited content in a library?
How can a shadow library defend itself legally, related to the kind of content it provides?

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PROJECT GUTENBERG

Abstract

Project Gutenberg, initiated in 1971 by Michael Hart, is the world's oldest digital library of "eBooks", that is, books that are available electronically as PDFs, HTML, ePUB and plain text format. The collection has more recently expanded to include audio books, and texts in a variety of languages other than English. On the wiki-based website www.gutenberg.org, more than 58,000 eBooks are indexed by author, title, language and "recently posted". The search function allows users to look for titles by US Library of Congress search terms, as well as by going through Google and Yahoo metadata. The majority of these books are within the public domain and therefore free from copyright restrictions, although undoubtedly there are some that are orphaned by subsequent changes to US copyright terms (which in most cases of published texts, is now 70 years after the death of the author). Due to this, as well as differences in copyright law internationally, the complete legal legitimacy of its collection is in question, despite careful attempts to comply with US copyright law. It is important to note that Project Gutenberg is a project, rather than a single library, with sister affiliations in many countries (Project Gutenberg Australia, Project Gutenberg Europe among many others). This, alongside its non-profit stance (Project Gutenberg accepts donations, and also calls for volunteer help with proofreading and digitization of books, as well as recording audio books) lends moral legitimacy to its online distribution of texts.

Questions

Looks like a clasic collection; the interface is classic; based on a wiki; speaks of legitamacy
Who is responsible and what are they responsible for?
This is all the stuff that's in the public domain...
What could be the motivation to make such a library?
What values does it communicate?
Good. Air of legitimacy; “library of congress search terms” and google to collect information. On this way they seek legitimacy from the on-line and off-line agents.
What do they mean 'a project'? (is this an agent of legitimacy?) Involves many people; projects into the future; mutable (not set in stone)
What is it filtered out and what are the political implications of that?
How does the codex form limit what is available?
Who does the library serve?
Who is responsible and what are they responsible for?

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AAAAARG.FAIL

Abstract

Out of the necessity for a library, for artist Sean Dockray's LA-based educational institution called "The Public School", aaaaarg.fail (formerly aaarg.org, then aaaarg.org) is a website that hosts a collection of mostly theory and critical theory texts, and an online forum for members. Access to the collection comes from registering an account (you must be invited by a member first). Members can upload and download texts, as well as request titles via the forum. The changes in the domain name for the library come from repeated copyright infringement allegations from publishers of works that have been made accessible on the site, including the Australian publisher Macmillan. The publisher hired Mark Taylor, a former music industry executive, who was instrumental in bringing forth a cease and desist order against aaarg.org. Dockray later called this "another case where university students are conceived of as consumers, as carriers of debt for everything from degrees to consumer electronics to intellectual property" (http://unprojects.org.au/magazine/issues/issue-4-2/the-future-and-the-public-school/ ).

Questions

Who does the library serve? (who are the customers?)
Intellectual snobs.
You have to be invited
Forum? What affordance does that give?
Sociability? There is a set of manners
The forum produces a text (a form of collective annotation); a discussion on the texts in the library. Because you can make requests it is much more personal. You can also select by "most requested", which means that a hierarchy of information is produced within the forum.(by the discussion of the members)
How is it different if you can participate in discussing the content of a library, than just be a viewer-receiver of the content?
Who is responsible and what are they responsible for?
How is it different to be an exclusive member in order to have access to the content of a library, compared to have no restrictions in accessing it?
How does the collection (and discourse around it) represent the members of the library?
If the library is based on user requests, it's a mirror of the members interests/social status/credentials/ideologies/clout
Does this platform require a certain degree of library literacy and research skills?
Does the background of the librarians affect the content presented in a library?

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UBUWEB.COM

Abstract

UbuWeb.com is a large web-based, free, non-commercial resource for avant-garde poetry, music, film, literature and more, founded in 1996 by poet Kenneth Goldsmith. It offers visual, concrete and sound poetry, expanding to include film and sound art mp3 archives. The site's architecture limits retrieval to keyword searching and browsing by media type and artist/project name. In addition, sustainability is a concern for this website as it was never intended to be a permanent archive. Still, there is no comparable commercial source for the content on UbuWeb so it is valuable as a resource for libraries to point users toward so long as librarians are aware of its limitations. It is a library which is ever-expanding in uncanny—and often uncategorizable—directions. Each section has an editor who brings to the site their area of expertise. UbuWeb is not n to any academic institution, instead relying on alliances of interest and benefiting from bandwidth donations from its partnerships with GreyLodge, WFMU, PennSound, The Electronic Poetry Center, The Center for Literary Computing, and ArtMob. UbuWeb was founded in response to the marginal distribution of crucial avant-garde material. It remains non-commercial and operates on a gift economy. UbuWeb ensures educational open access to out-of-print works that find a second life through digital art reprint while also representing the work of contemporaries. It addresses problems in the distribution of and access to intellectual materials.

Questons

Who does the library serve?
What could be the motivation to make such a library?
What values does it communicate?
How can the material available in a library shape the discourse around a particular field?