Abstract
The Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) movement has been a crucial source of inspiration and theorization for the contemporary rediscovery of the commons. However, its growing organic integration into the industry, into the market and into a group of innovative forms of capitalistic competition is challenging the early interpretations of this phenomenon and, at the same time, is shedding new light on the forms that these new commons can take and on the potential role they will play in the new productive arrangements that are emerging on the frontier of the digital revolution. This article engages with these new evolutions and develops innovative approaches to this phenomenon. Specifically, it makes an original contribution in two directions. The first is by developing a new framework for analyzing the relationships between commons and markets. The framework is organized under three concepts: semi-commons, shared infrastructures and creation of ecosystems. As a whole, the framework highlights the importance of studying these new commons within hybrid combinations of regimes of property and economic appropriation. The second contribution is the development of interpretative keys for analyzing the evolution of the FOSS ecosystem. This is carried out through the experimental application of two frameworks of analysis to this phenomenon: the multi-level perspective and the theory of the techno-economic paradigms. These contributions allow us to draw conclusions regarding new directions for research and policy on FOSS and the new commons.
When Gloria Anzaldúa died in 2004, she gave birth to an enormous archive; indeed, she left far more unpublished writings than works published in her lifetime. What's more, Anzaldúa was a compulsive reviser, and her archive includes ten to twenty unique drafts of some works, along with doodles, ticket stubs, and other ephemera. This collection of material decenters what we previously thought constituted her literary corpus, knocking the presumed author of Borderlands / La Frontera off her axis. The process of sifting through these materials changed my thinking about authority, textuality, identity, and many other things. My obsession with this archive has led me to reexamine the ways in which we produce, reproduce, and coproduce knowledge in archival work. In this essay, I show how recognizing the multiple material actants at work in this archive transforms conventional thought about archives, in general, and Anzaldúan studies, in particular.
We are in the middle of a second enclosure movement. It sounds grandiloquent to call it "the enclosure of the intangible commons of the mind," but in a very real sense that is just what it is. True, the new state-created property rights may be "intellectual" rather than "real," but once again things that were formerly thought of as either common property or uncommodifiable are being covered with new, or newly extended, property rights. In this article, I try to develop the vocabulary and the analytic tools necessary to turn the tide of enclosure. I offer an historical sketch of various types of skepticism about intellectual property, from the antimonopolist criticisms of the Framers of the U.S. Constitution, through the emergence of affirmative arguments for the public domain, to the use of the language of the commons to defend the possibility of distributed methods of non-proprietary production. In many ways, it turns out, concepts of the public domain show the same variation in assumptions, and the same analytic differences, as the concept of property itself. I conclude by arguing that, for a number of reasons, the appropriate model for the change in thinking which I argue for comes from the history of the environmental movement. The invention of the concept of "the environment" pulls together a string of otherwise disconnected issues, offers analytical insight into the blindness implicit in prior ways of thinking, and leads to perception of common interest where none was seen before. Like the environment, the public domain must be "invented" before it is saved. Like the environment, like "nature," the public domain turns out to be a concept that is considerably more slippery than many of us realize. And, like the environment, the public domain nevertheless turns out to be useful, perhaps even necessary.
Ephemera — material culture not generally considered to be of enduring cultural or historical value — has long confounded archivists and recordkeepers. Often considered anomalous within broader institutional repositories, ephemeral records are further side-lined by dominant archival processes, standards, and logics; they lose their contextual nuances and thus become hidden collections within collections. Despite persistent professional anxieties and archival omissions, ephemeral archives often constitute a powerful source for counter-histories of a given institution, community, movement, or era. Such materials are imbued with the specific social and emotional textures of their creators’ lives and accordingly, they require a level of familiarity with their context in order to produce useful, meaningful layers of interpretation. Taking as its site of investigation the English country house archive, this article explores an ephemeral collection which offers a radically different history of an institution often perceived as a bastion of patriarchy and privilege, but which has simultaneously been obscured because of its ephemerality. In offering a close reading of a collection that represents working-class and non-heteronormative archival practices and genealogies, I draw from feminist and decolonial approaches to the archive that centre notions of care, slowness, and intentionality and present ways of better understanding, valuing, and making use of ephemeral collections.
The Keepers of Ghosts project began when 10,000 records from a former sign-painting company were rescued from a demolition site in Melbourne’s west. Beginning with the creation of an online archive, the project has since developed into an experimental research program of community outreach involving sign writers, shopkeepers, local history aficionados and people interested in ‘ghost signs’, or the remains of painted advertising signs. Here we discuss the project’s investigation of the use of digital media to informally document and share otherwise-forgotten aspects of urban memory, and the proposition that the interplay between digital and physical archival activities can be harnessed to involve and connect diverse groups with shared interests, both at local and global levels.
Historians and archivists approach the documentary past differently, as they consider, respectively, the "archive" (singular) and "archives" (plural). The former focuses on issues of power, memory, and identity centered upon the initial inscription of a document (or series of documents). The latter concentrates on the subsequent history of documents over time, including the many interventions by archivists (and others) that transform (and change) that original archive into archives. Despite making good common cause in lobbying over public policy and initially sharing values based on objective, scientific history, the two professions have drifted apart in recent decades. This essay explores the reasons for this divergence by analyzing the history of the two professions and highlighting resulting misconceptions that blind both to deeper nuances of the multiple contexts surrounding records that may enhance their understanding and use. It concludes that archives are not unproblematic storehouses of records awaiting the historian, but active sites of agency and power. Until recently, it has been in the interests of both professions to deny (or at least not interrogate) the subjectivity of archives. Both professions could benefit significantly, therefore, from a renewed partnership centered upon the history of the record to produce better history.
This essay proposes four theses for a Critical Library and Information Studies (CLIS) research agenda. The author argues that a normative commitment to libraries as social institutions should guide any future CLIS research agenda, that the natural sciences are a poor model for CLIS research, that value neutrality should be abandoned, and that any CLIS project should propose alternatives.
Completeness and context are particularly important when appraising collections of ephemera. The integrity of a collection as found should be recorded, if not preserved; any intrinsic or imposed order should be respected. The whole usually has more meaning than the sum of its parts-but care must be taken not to jettison some of the more subtle parts. Since we cannot wholly predict what meaning future scholars will read in what we have preserved, we must preserve as much, as carefully, with as much intelligence as we can.
Vocational awe describes the set of ideas, values, and assumptions librarians have about themselves and the profession that result in notions that libraries as institutions are inherently good, sacred notions, and therefore beyond critique. I argue that the concept of vocational awe directly correlates to problems within librarianship like burnout and low salary. This article aims to describe the phenomenon and its effects on library philosophies and practices so that they may be recognized and deconstructed.
The archival value of zines (self-published pamphlets often produced by radical and marginalized communities) as historical records has been well documented in academic research. Red Chidgey refers to zines as ‘sources of advocacy and empowerment for those who make them, an attempt to bear witness to their own lives’. As evidence of networks, cultures, linguistics and experiences of marginalized individuals and communities, zines often exist as the only representation of ephemeral and otherwise undocumented spaces, which makes them incredibly valuable as the primary source material. Following the establishment of large zine collections at heritage spaces including the Women’s Library, British Library, Wellcome Library and Tate, zines are now regularly collected and used in programming at heritage organizations. But what does it mean to archive and make use of zines – particularly those created by marginalized makers and communities – in an institutional heritage context? This article considers the ethical implications of archiving zine practice and cultures – anti-institutional in its nature – in institutional spaces. Through a case study analysis of the community-led archive project Queer Zine Archive Project, I argue that, if zines are archived, it is imperative that archive workers are critically thinking about and incorporating the originating politics of zine culture into protocols for cataloguing, access, interpretation and use of these materials.
This article examines libraries’ responsibility to engage with and support communities of color as they challenge systemic racism, engage in the political process, and exercise their right to free speech. Many libraries have ignored the Black Lives Matter movement, citing the need to maintain neutrality. Despite extensive scholarship questioning the validity of this concept, the framing of library neutrality as nonpartisanship continues. This article examines librarianship’s engagement with, and disengagement from Black communities through the lens of the Black Lives Matter movement. It also explores the implications of education, engagement, and activism for people of color and libraries today.
The intention of this essay is to serve as a guide to the literature treating the historical development of the American public library. It also provides a selective analysis of the literature dealing with the role of the public library. An extensive selected bibliography is included along with an appendix which is a short critical essay on the literature on American social history, especially the literature dealing with reform in America.
Defines American ephemera as "an unpublished, flimsy, or insubstantial printed paper artifact produced for a specific purpose and not intended to survive beyond that purpose." Shows how ephemera, by definition intended to be thrown away, became collectibles in the 20th c., and discusses two collections now part of the Winterthur Library. Among the objects in the collections are paper dolls and toys, greeting cards, scrapbooks, children's books, religious cards, calling cards, and advertising cards. Also offers suggestions as to the historical uses of collections of ephemera in library and museum contexts, and explains how such fragile works can be preserved.
Censorship is an act of control, driven by a combustible mix of power, privilege, and fear. Large pro-censorship movements historically occur in response to social changes that alarms a privileged population, with the goal dictating access to information for the entire community that is in accord with the personal beliefs of the privileged group. The urge to censor is rooted in the use of raw power to preserve the currently privileged, and censorship will be a threat tolibraries as long as privilege seeks to perpetuate itself. With the current censorship movement against many marginalized groups, the intent in banning access to materials representing the voices and experiences of those populations is to keep them marginalized. The current censorship wave represents not only a threat to intellectual freedom, but to civil rights and human rights. This paper attempts to help give perspective to the current censorship movement and the ways in which libraries can respond by placing it within the larger historical trends of censorship. While this new movement has added seemingly unthinkable dimensions, like laws that threaten to imprison libraries for simply doing their jobs, much of what is occurring now is also deeply rooted in past attempts to thwart social change.
This article examines how the archive profession has addressed the notion of representation, focusing particularly on the area of acquisition policies. Drawing upon the limited professional theory and practice which has been developed, primarily in the USA, it advocates the need for more proactive and targeted policies and strategies. Using the acquisition of Black and ethnic minority archives as an example, it calls on the UK archive profession to take a fresh approach to collecting."
Scholars and practitioners have exposed the limitations of traditional Euro-American approaches to
knowledge organization (KO) when it comes to Indigenous topics. To develop more effective KO practices, there
is a need for KO practitioners to understand Indigenous perspectives at an epistemological level. A theoretically-
informed model of Indigenous systems of knowledge serves as a pedagogical tool to support the labor of boundary-
spanning and code-switching between Euro-American KO practices and Indigenous KO practices.
Intrinsic value was established in the early 1980s as a criterion of appraisal to identify those documents to be retained in their original form. Although perpetuated as an "objective" concept and a new appraisal standard for a particular class of documents, it becomes apparent through critical analysis that its application ascribes value to documents in much the same way as any other value in the traditional "taxonomy." What follows is an evaluation of the definition of intrinsic value, the criteria by which it is to be assigned, and its invocation in the appraisal process.
This qualitative study explored the feelings of students about using the library for research. Personal writing, collected in beginning composition courses over a two-year period, was analyzed for recurrent themes. It was found that 75 to 85 percent of the students in these courses described their initial response to library research in terms of fear. Three concepts emerged from these descriptions: (1) students generally feel that their own library-use skills are inadequate while the skills of other students are adequate, (2) the inadequacy is shameful and should be hidden, and (3) the inadequacy would be revealed by asking questions. A grounded theory of library anxiety was constructed from these data.
Posters are not commonly acquisitioned by libraries because they cannot be processed, cataloged and stored in a way books and journals are, and unlike printed text are not viewed as an information commodity. In an informal survey of ARL libraries, only the Library of Congress defined the role of posters as an important component of its collecting activities. At Colorado State University, an international poster exhibition occurs biennially which is the only one of its kind in the United States, and posters from exhibitions since 1991 are given to the university library. The library developed a descriptive record of the posters and digitized the images on to compact disks. With catalog, storage, and imaging technology now in place, the posters are valuable as a library resource because they encompass many disciplines of university study and serve as a commentary on our culture.
This chapter explores the impact archives have in social justice struggles over urban redevelopments, looking at uses of activist archives in an anti-gentrification campaign. Because urban redevelopment takes place over a long period of time (sometimes decades) and because it is an increasingly bureaucratic and mediated process, archives can aid activists in contesting gentrification. Drawing from a case study of the 56a Infoshop Archive and the redevelopment of the Heygate Council Estate in London, UK, this chapter illuminates two ways in which archives have been incorporated into anti-gentrification activism. First, archiving is used as a means to track the redevelopment process, enabling scrutiny of local authorities and developers. Secondly, archival records are used to construct and disseminate alternative narratives in public spheres that counter official discourses of regeneration. Learning from the case study, I suggest that the social justice impact of archives for activists is the ability to mobilize alternative and counter-knowledges, strengthen collective voices in official spaces of politics, and preserve and publicize histories of resistance against inequalities in the city.
How do information workers resist the creation of archival “deathworlds”? With rising eugenicist rhetoric in the United States, sites of cultural memory face devastating impacts. These consequences are particularly felt by Disabled and multiply-marginalized communities. This article draws on Disability Justice principles and necropolitical framings to investigate how processes of erasure can be interrupted through active collaboration and critical reevaluation of power-sharing. By supporting alternative forms of knowledge sharing and honoring the lived experience of historically marginalized communities, especially those who have faced forced institutionalization, we hope to craft alternative methodologies that center community involvement and self-determination.
Ephemeral evidence, or ephemera (including posters, flyers, and other materials created for short-term purposes), poses numerous challenges to archivists and researchers seeking to understand their provenance, veracity, and significance.In particular, scholars of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer people and communities frequently encounter such materials since ephemera has become a central element of much queer archiving practice. Drawing on an ongoing research project examining the history of gay and lesbian college student organizing as an example, this article suggests how oral history can help "animate" ephemera, providing researchers a way to enhance the interpretive value of such fleeting evidence. Oral histories can transform "queer campus ephemera," traces of 1970s queer student histories in the form of flyers, posters, and short-lived newsletters produced by gay and lesbian students, into more substantive evidence of the social and political climate in which such students lived, went to school, and organized. Through these examples, the article explores the benefits (and limitations) of using oral history to interpret ephemeral archival evidence.
Our research aims to explore the personal contexts of community-based participatory archive contributors by unveiling the stories behind the objects the contributors donate to the archives. These stories are historical and valuable in intent because they provide rich evidence about and insights into the past from the perspective of the community members. Using the Mass. Memories Road Show as a case study, we analyzed interviews with individuals who contributed photographs that provide a snapshot of their community to the community-based participatory archives. We employed a grounded theory approach to categorize the photographs contributed and identify themes from the memories and sentiments evoked from the stories behind the photographs. The results of this study demonstrate how people perceive and appraise their past life memories and how their surrounding community influences the formation of community-based participatory archives. This study sheds light on how individuals make connections to their communities through their personal objects and stories.
This article explores aspects of the archival value of graffiti and street art. It applies an intersectional feminist lens and draws upon Althusserian subject interpellation to elaborate some potential techniques for appraising graffiti. Understanding graffiti as ideological calls can help us understand how graffiti acts on us and functions for us: as a record of oppression, institutional and social relations, and individual negotiations with power. The article offers examples of graffiti acting as a form of speech for the unheard and marginalized and illustrates these examples with photographs of graffiti captured by the author and images of graffiti and street art located in various collections. It compares the appraisal and collection methods of the Urban Art Mapping Project, a North American participatory graffiti archive, with the Street- ARToronto (StART) street-art map maintained by the City of Toronto. Through these comparisons, the article argues for the evidential value of locally driven archives of the type of political graffiti excluded from the StART map.
This article introduces and applies the concept of “physical-equivalent privacy”
to evaluate the appropriateness of data collection about library patrons’ use of
library-provided e‑resources. It posits that as a matter of service equity, any data
collection practice that causes e‑resource users to enjoy less information privacy
than users of an information-equivalent print resource is to be avoided. Analysis is
grounded in real-world e‑resource-related phenomena: secure (HTTPS) library
websites and catalogs, the Adobe Digital Editions data-leak incident of 2014, and
use of web trackers on e‑resource websites. Implications of physical-equivalent
privacy for the SeamlessAccess single-sign-on proposal will be discussed
Visual ephemera is everyday materials of a transitory nature, rarely saved, which have a significant visual component. Postcards, movie posters, music concert posters, calendars, and illustrated brochures are examples of visual ephemera. Preservation issues related to visual ephemera include paper hydrolysis, clay coatings, chemically aggressive inks, photographic disintegration, and damage by mold, photo-oxidation, air pollutants, and improper handling. Conservation issues related to visual ephemera include paper repair, cleaning and stain removal, deacidification, and funding for conservation work.
Anxieties over automation and personal freedom are challenging libraries’ role as havens of intellectual freedom. The introduction of artificial intelligence into the resource description process creates an opportunity to reshape the digital information landscape—and loss of trust by library users. Resource description necessarily manipulates a library’s presentation of information, which influences the ways users perceive and interact with that information. Human catalogers inevitably introduce personal and cultural biases into their work, but artificial intelligence may perpetrate biases on a previously unseen scale. The automation of this process may be perceived as a greater threat than the manipulation produced by human operators. Librarians must understand the risks of artificial intelligence and consider what oversight and countermeasures are necessary to mitigate the harm to libraries and their users before ceding resource description to artificial intelligence in place of the “professional considerations” the IFLA Statement on Libraries and Intellectual Freedom calls for in providing access to library materials.
Scholars exploit an ever-expanding corpus of evidence in their research, including materials that have fallen traditionally outside the purview of most repositories' collecting policies. This article examines political posters as an example of this useful but undercollected class of materials, from the vantage point of their research value and the challenges they pose to institutions that collect them. Such challenges include the nontraditional production and distribution modes that make acquisition of political posters difficult; the lack of consensus on cataloging methods; the preservation problems arising from the political poster's function to communicate quickly but ephemerally in public spaces; and the technical and copyright issues associated with digitization. Solutions are proposed in each of these areas in an effort to identify best practices and enable institutions to assist scholars with adequate collections to meet the needs of evolving research agendas.