54 lines
3.6 KiB
Markdown
54 lines
3.6 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: "Memory of the World"
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mentioned_in: ["/topic/politicisingpiracy.md"]
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---
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# Scenarios for massive disobedience
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> A public library is:
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> * *·* free access to books for every member of society
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> * *·* library catalog
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> * *·* librarian
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>
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> With books ready to be shared, meticulously cataloged, everyone is a librarian. When everyone is librarian, library is everywhere.
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Since 2012 [Memory of the World](https://www.memoryoftheworld.org) has been developing and publicly supporting scenarios for massive disobedience against the intellectual property regime regulating the production and circulation of knowledge in the digital realm. Its starting point was simple: that the public library is the institutional form societies have devised to make knowledge and culture accessible to all their members regardless of social or economic status.
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# The public library and shadow libraries
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There is a political consensus that this principle of access is fundamental to the purpose of a modern society. Yet, as digital networks have radically expanded the access to literature and scientific research, public libraries have largely been denied the ability to extend to digital ‘objects’ the kind of de-commodified access they provide in the world of print.
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As the readers have been thus denied the access to knowledge due to territorial, institutional and economic divides, they have resorted to creating their own systems of access by sharing PDFs and building shadow libraries, doing for access to knowlede what public libraries were not allowed to do in the digital world.
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Memory of the World is aimed at helping to fill the space that remains denied to real-world public libraries. Obviously it is not alone in this effort. There are many other shadow libraries, some more public, some more secretive, working to help people share books. And the practice of sharing is massive.
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# Amateur librarianship
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Memory of the World makes a case for the institution of public library and expansion of its principle of the universal access to knowledge into the digital realm. However, it also is an exploration of a distributed infrastructure for amateur librarians.
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Public Library is a collection of collections maintained by amateur librarians. It draws its inspiration and builds upon the efforts of **aaaaarg**, **Library Genesis**, **Monoskop**, **UbuWeb** and **Textz.com** to create a networked infrastructure of universal access to knowledge. Memory of the World’s aim is to promote, connect and improve that infrastructure.
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It does so through:
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* · digitization projects focusing on politics of memory:
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* · [Catalogue of Liberated Books (K_O_K)](https://kok.memoryoftheworld.org/)
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* · [Praxis (digitized)](https://praxis.memoryoftheworld.org/)
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* · [Herman's Library](http://herman.memoryoftheworld.org/)
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* · [Otpisane (The Written-Off)](https://otpisane.memoryoftheworld.org/)
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* · software development:
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* · aggregation of collections at http://library.memoryoftheworld.org
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* · Calibre plugin [let’s share books] (obsoleted)
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* · [Accorder](https://pypi.org/project/accorder/)
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* · building of DIY bookscanners
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* · workflows of [digitization](https://knowledge-production.github.io/forge/tutorials/book-digitization.html) and [amateur librarianship](http://tom.medak.click/en/amateur/).
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{{< raw >}}
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<div class="spacer1"></div>
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{{< /raw >}}
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{{< figure src="/images/169.png" width="100%" title="Figure 1. Memory of the World book scanner built by Voja Antonić and the Pirate Care Syllabus book printed out from the PDF generated by Sandpoints." >}}
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{{< raw >}}
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<div class="spacer2"></div>
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{{< /raw >}}
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