*On-going threads..

Community Library Alliance
How community libraries, individual collections and other precarious archives can build aligned collections online when libraries are increasingly under threat (ReBAL, Maydayrooms)

Indexing situations/locations, archive ephemera
[03/06 12.00 @ https://bbb.constantvzw.org/b/ros-mx7-mm9 ]
Archives with indexes that includes spaces, slang, rumours, parties, squats, infoshops, bars etc. (BAL, MayDayrooms)

Workflows for/around pdf
[03/06 14.00 guided tour of pdf file @ see program]
https://pad.constantvzw.org/p/unbinding_pdfs
(OSP, MayDayRooms)

Attributing collective authorship
[03/06 15.00 sharing moment with PZI students @ BBB studio]
Attribution/authorship in collectively authored/ephemeral material 
Clara mentioning "pain of collective authorship"
collectivity: attribution, bibliographical, cataloguing practices. Complexity of escape or confirm the need of attribution, visibility, anonymity. 
https://pad.constantvzw.org/p/unboundlibrary_collective_authorships
(Feminist Search tool, Eva, MayDayRooms, Femke, Clara)
+
Sharing conditions
> cultural extractionist appropriation (when do we speak of "using" and when of "appropriating"
> Licences: reading decolonial licences and texts Femke has gathered on inbound.licence pad. https://pad.constantvzw.org/p/unbound.license
https://pad.constantvzw.org/p/unboundlibraries_FAC
(Feminist Search tool, Roel, Femke, Eva)


Omissions conversation
[03/06 17.00 sharing moment with PZI students @ BBB studio]
Rosemary, Eva, Femke


Complexifying gender categories 
1. looking into the thesaurus (IHLIA's homosaurus specifically: http://homosaurus.org/v2) as a way to complicate/complexify binary classifications of gender
Screenshot of the visualization tool: https://cloud.constantvzw.org/s/7Xf3ArjGp2HJXCA?path=%2Ftexts%2FFeminist%20Search%20Tool%20Group#pdfviewer 
-homosaurus speaks to the content of the book
2. clustering indications of topics related to gender(s) and sexuality of the author from different sources like wikidata and other sources (challenge of collective authors/ missing information)-- analytics/approximation not so much definitions/ clusters speaks to the question of gender and sexualities --- clusters not labels


Classification + description + catalogue
[03/06 16.00 exchange with PZI students ]
(infrastructural manoeuvres, Eva, Rebal, FST

What is the relation between classification (coding/location) and bibliographic description (records data)?
https://pad.constantvzw.org/p/unboundlibraries_marcru

(> more on the question is assembled here: https://pad.constantvzw.org/p/unboundlibrary_infrastructural_manoeuvres )

https://www.ihlia.nl/search/?q%3Asearch=homosaurus&lang=nl
Classifications are artificial and there is already actual violence
How can we speak to both?


Catalogue as a tool (relate to previous)
The catalogue as a tool, that works without us being present, as an autonomous agent, 'doing' stuff without us ... But attempts to find right naming is not working. presumptious to think there actually is a right name. the ideay of the perfect catalog and "correct" naming and framing does not work. 
Emily Drabinski: Teaching the Radical catalogue: http://www.emilydrabinski.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/drabinski_radcat.pdf
Emily Drabinsksi: Queering the Catalog: Queer Theory and the Politics of Correction
https://digitalcommons.liu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1007&context=brooklyn_libfacpubs
How can a structure be kind, open and hospitable? How can we reproduce multiplicity of voices in a structure? How can we offer gentle 'guiding'? Can we think of different paths throughtout different entries, connections, intersections, relations,...?
Structure as Hospitality:
"Infinite Hospitality" by David Senior. Text on colon classification (Ranganathan)
http://www.dextersinister.org/MEDIA/PDF/InfiniteHospitality.pdf


Publicness & metaphor of compost heap/toxicity
"Set up structures that invite also unwanted participation."
> public (conversation above: openess, toxicity, hands dirty)
Roel: "Set up structures that invite also unwanted participation." (Eva would like to talk more about this)

Thursday 4th of July: Meet with Wilfred van Buuren (head collection) and Berry Feith (digitization) from IHLIA at OBA (Public Library in Amsterdam) [Anja is setting this up]

Update readinglist with additional material (for example with Feminist search tool materials)

Read some materials (from the reader) together



Tools/interfaces for other archives
(Feminist search tool, Maydayrooms)

////////////////

SOME OTHER TIME, NOT THIS WEEK?

An xdexing session
Friends Jara Rocha + Manetta Berends developed a method for making other types of in-dexes or ex-dexes. Femke is thinking about how to make a shortish session on this.
Here's a text about 'xdexing' as part of the Iterations book: https://iterations.space/files/iterations-x-dex.pdf
Here's how you 'xdex': https://pad.constantvzw.org/p/next-Iterations-xdexing-workshop (line 212)

----

Eva sees possible connections:
 
> public (conversation above: openess, toxicity, hands dirty)
Roel: "Set up structures that invite also unwanted participation." (Eva would like to talk more about this)  
 
> Eva wants to talk with Clara about "pain of collective authorship" (from her intro conversation).
 
> collectivity: attribution, bibliographical, cataloguing practices. Complexity of escape or confirm the need of attribution, visibility, anonymity. 
 
> cultural extractionist appropriation (when do we speak of "using" and when of "appropriating"
 
> Licences: reading decolonial licences and texts Femke has gathered on inbound.licence pad. https://pad.constantvzw.org/p/unbound.license


Mail Rosemary
Possible connections:
ReBAL: really interested in now ReBAL was able to build a federation of catalogues across these different libraries. I'm interested in how a library of libraries might be a useful way of thinking about how community libraries, individual collections and other precarious archives can build aligned collections online when libraries are increasing under threat. MayDay Rooms has recently helped reestablish the the Network of Radical Archives and Library (NORLA) and I would be really interested in talking in more detail about how you mapped these disparate catalogues into a meta catalogue, what affect that had on individual collections, and how you make connections with materials in the different collections. I was also interested in whether there was an idea to create a similar coalition for digitisation, this is what we are kind of trying to do with a new project leftove.rs.

We have also had an archive donated from Dario Fo and Franca Rama's translator and will be running a collective reading and screening the week following the worksession.
I mention this as I was looking at the Pinelli Archive (http://omeka.bida.im/s/pinelli/page/progetto) mention in your conversation. We were also using omeka to build our archive of housing struggles.


BAL: I loved the description of BAL and the different ways you brought together fragmented historical sources, MayDay Rooms collection is made up of similar types of material and I would be interested in thinking though the nature of political ephemera as something that is a trace, contingent on other strategies other than a catalogue to become understandable.
I really like BAL's use of lists instead of indexes that includes spaces, slang, rumours, parties etc. We have also been thinking about different ways to group material in our digital archive (https://leftove.rs) around things like spaces (squats, infoshops, bars etc), this has been particularly useful with our Underground Techno Archive that looks at resistance to the Public Order Act (1993) in the UK through mapping the sites of protests and raves (https://audio.maydayrooms.org/techno-activate).

OSP: Really liked your distinction between unbinding/rebinding. We have been thinking about different was of extracting information from OCRed scans in our digital archive in order to help recombine them in different assemblages, create new metadata fields and generally unpack the pdfs in general. We have also been thinking along the lines of integrating pages rather than whole objects so i'd be really interested to talk through some of your workflows and thought on this.

Eva: Not completely related to the questions that you were looking to concentrate on during the worksession but I've been looking at your wiki at the section of Library as Infrastructure (http://wiki.evaweinmayr.com/index.php/Survey_of_the_field#A_network_of_relationships:_Infoshops_.281990s_U.K..29) and the history of infoshop and smaller libraries. I'm interested in how you could represent these spaces as an organizing principle of an archive of political ephemera. As we also discussed briefly in the conversation I'd also like to look at questions of attribution in collectively authored material.

Femke: Would like to follow on from the conversation and talk through this idea of omissions. Eva perhaps you would like to join for this :)

I couldn't access the nextcloud so I also shared some texts on MayDay Room's install
https://files.maydayrooms.org/s/bKSeZHzZcMJqPip

Mail Feminist Search Tool
Although we are already a large group we would really like to see how we can exchange and collaborate with other groups and participants. Listening to all the conversations we see a lot of super interesting overlaps: 


Roel:
    coming from the direction of self-hosting practices, community infrastructures, decentralized networks
    
    For this week I'd like focus on the broad question of what exactly a federation is and does. In decentralized networks, a federation is particular networking topology that allows for interoperability between distinct local aspects over a common protocol. In political theory, a federation refers to particular modes of organizing governance. These can be seen both as federal states/governments (Belgium, USA are examples) but there is also a long tradition of federations in things such as organized labour movements. 
    
    So is there at all a lineage between federations in political theory and in ICT? If so, what does that tell us?
    Are there intrinsic properties to federations that we should know about? For example when we federate online, what does that do for us but also what new threats might that enable? 
    Can it be a way of sharing / being public conditionally? To keep and safeguard local diversity without resorting to seclusion on the one hand and unconditional openness on the other? 
    
    rebal.info / Jacoppo: Interested in the federated catalog, how it makes distinct local collections accessible and findable,
    but also the work of bida.im and in particular their mastodon instance.
    
    Femke: perhaps continuing some conversations we've had before wrt your research on topology and 'forms' of being together?
    
    maydayrooms / Rosemarie: I'm really interested in the history of federation as an organizational form in progressive movements and understanding the reasoning that went in to that. Perhaps we could speak about that and perhaps the maydayrooms archive has interesting documents relating to that history? 
    
    Infrastructural Manoevers / Anita, Martino: I'm interested in the move to 'infrastructure', where one has to become explicit, solid, understandable and reliable in order to shift things infrastructurally. But how can one keep certain modes of questioning and doing still available in that context? Or how does that making of opinionated infrastructure work as a guarantor for that space of questioning and doing?