Mayday Rooms
introduction & approach to archiving
will talk about project in collaboration with 0X2020 in Berlin, digital archiving project

archive of radical social movements coming out of post 68 left libertarian collectives

physically, just in from of goldman sachs in the center of City of london, in the site of the first printing press, at the heart of global finance..

also research & meeting center for contemporary mouvements
a collective running the archive
a collective running the building
in the building:
Latin American cleaning and domestic unions
publication projects
political education groups

both hosting and documenting political movements
context affects what they collect, how they collect & distribute
-> how you relate historical material to contemporary struggles
'activation' in waiting for a better term

collaborative work on archive and on history.
anyone can come in, use the archive, propose a project, set up different working groups

ex. mayday radio, focusing on oral strategies on the archive
experimenting also out of strict oral history methodologies..

archive as active in the present and not just a place in history
name Mayday: international workers' day, international distress call
set up in 2012, after financial crisis, closure of many smaller collections/libraries

social approach to archivings, collections are informal not just instituional..
connections to receive materials too very informal.

https://maydayrooms.org/

Pandemic notes: diary & testimonies
https://pandemic-notes.maydayrooms.org/
work as enquiry methodology to look at conditions during Corona crisis
asks people for testimonies, will be object of workshops, extract organising models

not collecting books, collecting political ephemera
pamphlets, positiong papers, posters....
they have library rescued from university dept philosophy, not related immediately
they do'nt try to have the 'finite' collection on group/mouvement, materials come to them

activist media project collecting video from anti-globalization struggle, documenting also the infiltration of police..

when you receive ephemera, how are they grouped with other materials?
it depends what it is
ex. they just received a huge collection from someone called 'Red Note', protests around automobile industry in the 70s
ex. smaller things, f.ex. squatting
ex. decenting ephemera: category where everything goes that is not particular group

people don't come in to ask for individual item
more from social engagment and interest in specific era

try to maintain original index system
ex Lucas Plan, 60s, arms related & concord engeneering
turned factory over to socially production, workers ownership socialist project around production
this is catalogued in interesting way, we kept folder structure, catalogued it and put it online

Do you refuse sometimes items? Why?
Yes, some are more usefully kept elsewhere
we don't keep party politics/political institutional material, they have their own archives
Some people do want to get rid of their stacks...

they digitize things, take films/videos/pictures...
collectiong rew a lot over the last years

How do you create a digital archive?
starts with material, construct metadata that rather describes relationships
https://leftove.rs/

attempting ot integrate the catalog of mayday rooms with memoryoftheworld
but material is different from books and memory of hte world was more book oriented
what the material needs is more material around it that contextualizes..

so does not fit well with book oriented library structures..
so what to do with digitized material?

institutional digitization structures seemed horrible
internet archive, very industrial-oriented approach to digitization

how to activate archival material in a different way..
running scanathon and making workflows to get familiar with digitization, include it in one's own practice.

skill shares around scanning ocring pdfing etc.. digitization isnt just a task to be done because of presevation, but an active collective archiving process.

starting from the document section of pandora..
developing it. useful because starts as flat system where metadata system can be developed around that.

first thinking wiki, then moving away.. 
authorative descriptions of people/places are mostly missing in this material

scraping from smaller archives too, and also from big institutions.
lots of digital archives are either small and niche, not inclined to distribution, and big institutions where drm blocks circulation of the collection.
idea to bring all materials together on 1 platform and see how to create connections between different materials
https://archive.leftove.rs/
connections between different groups, formats, events

field of author is never filled it
it is attributed to the publisher
categories social mouvements / events
trying out 'tactics': everything is orc'd, full text search within the documents
built queries searching in the texts (rather than about the text) with conditions
put results in collections and then adding metadata, ex. strikes/occupations
this organises the archive as a resource
shoan (aargh) did language processing on archive and created index
https://archive.leftove.rs/static/index/
also did this for people and locations
'Reagan' as person that is hated
someone suggested field 'enemies', became 'antagonisms' (could be Thatcher, British state...)

https://leftove.rs/tmp/#browse
I'm interested in organising rent strike, I browse thorugh tactics field
needs still more data

taking from different sources & centralizing the material
rather as resource

archive being active vs fixing/holding archive
could be interesting to think about omissions and how you can do that? blind spots
if it was not meant for public consumption, it should not be on there, not personal things

not trying to be comprehensive.
FS: thinking about library of omissions and inclusions from Eva Weinmayr, activating the potential archive. 
one tactic can be activating the imaginary of what can be there.

the omission of ephemeral materials is one of the central aspects in MR
[not an issue of 'completion']

work in progress
with workshops

thought of category of 'temporality'
pamphlet, critique of mouvement, position piece
how to represent different time pressures in an archive
not clear how to do this
piece that might be made for quick call, can still have urgency years later

Cairou: cleaners & allied workers
MR holds all their material
all internal documents, not online

thought a lot about decentralised systems
https://samiz-dat.github.io/hyperreadings/
how to link them all together

machinic processing of the materials
are in tension with political tradition of the materials
is a way to do less labour & make available resources
how did you approach as a collective these questions?
is not the only way we're working
people also do close-readings, regular archive log that writes bits about the material
the need for other categories (ex. tactics) came from discussions on cross-collections
desire to cut through the material
do you have suggestions on how to use these methods for others?
is not the only thing you can do!
indexes are starting point to see what is interesting in the material, will be more discussions around that
interesting to see how different collections sit along each other
ex. very little material from gay liberation 70s
a way to get to know this material better, see where there are gaps
doesn't substitute knowledge of this collection

difference between digital & physical archive

worksession:
    look together at feminist search tool
    reading project alongside each other also Clara's XPub project
    interested in thinking about 'what is not a book', what do you with ephemera - can be interesting starting point
    eva's work on authorship is interesting, because it is not something you can organise this archive around
    interested in how things become active resource, platform where users can upload/download material

started listening to Rebal session
interested in catalogs they've been building
interesting links to that project, thinking about how digitized archives are being put online that go beyond catalogue model, can there be any collaborations?

cross archives with BAL / tactics on sharing objects