Library

The Chicago Underground Library is pleased to announce Orphan Works, a new reinterpretation series. Unlike traditional reading series, our performers are not reading from their own work. Some of them won’t even be reading. We’re calling upon a variety of the most creative minds in Chicago to burrow deep into our collection of anonymous works or ones for which no further information on the author can be found. Commonly referred to as “Orphan Works,” these lost publications will be brought back to life: read, reinterpreted, and reunited with the audience they’ve been missing. There is an ongoing debate on the status of works like these, and a number of groups and individuals are fighting to keep them free for creative reuse and artistic exploration.

I'm not sure why it strikes me as so odd to be using a blog to suggest that people pick up a magazine, considering our entire collection is paper-based and this blog is in fact a blog of a paper magazine.

This month's Harper's (May 2007, unfortunately not on their website yet, if you can't get it on a newsstand, just wait a couple of weeks) has an article on just that digital/paper dissonance, and presents an incredibly in-depth view of the Prelinger Archive in San Francisco. Never have I been so inspired to take our entire collection and organize it according to an esoteric whim, then continue to reorganize it ad infinitum.

I received this message out of the blue, and for anyone else who values their local public libraries, I hope it scares you as much as it scares me. Apparently the chair of the board of trustees for the Providence Public Library has announced plans to close most of the cities libraries. Why? She says libraries aren't about the buildings.

I'd like to see a library function without its building. As the people who have rallied to save the libraries have pointed out, a library isn't "just a book warehouse."

We couldn't function without our building, and our building is a file cabinet in the basement of a coffeeshop. Even just that means a lot for a community. Now add on all the things Providence's Public Libraries will also take away, and you end up with kids without places to do homework, people without internet access unable to access even basic information, fewer venues in the city for public use, not to mention all of the jobs and education opportunities lost.

D.I.Y is usually something we think of when we look at a zine or a really pretty hand-felted wallet; things that are finished. Things that were Done._.Yourself.

A large part of the enjoyment I get out of other peoples' D.I.Y projects, though, is getting to imagine the process of Doing. As in, how the hell did they do that? Even the simplest stitch has to be learned. Someone has to teach us how to un-jam the copier at Kinkos. And in that process, it's inevitable that things don't always work right the first time. Or the second.

Let's say you wanted to start a library. And you wanted that library to have a website. Let's say that you were neither a librarian nor knew the first thing about web design.

Note: video is pretty disturbing. (If YouTube embedding does not work, video can be found here: )

The excruciating video clip makes you want to shut your eyes as you hear sounds that echo those heard during the enflamed 1968 Vietnam-era demonstrations: Enraged students screaming at police; police yelling back and using strong force trying to get students under control.

If you are a reader like I am, you probably also own an abundance of books. Keeping track of those books can sometimes be a bit of a hassle. After trying numerous, often strenous different methods to catalog my nearly 200 books using tangible means, I finally gave up.

Before long the desire to catalog my books came back and I figured I'd try a different method: electronic. After a quick search online I narrowed my options down to two sites, "Collectorz*" and "LibraryThing" and looked over each site debating which one suited me the best.

Collectorz requires that you download a program and only allows you to catalog 100 books before you must begin paying for their services. LibraryThing on the other hand is all done online. Setting up an account is very easy and it allows you to input up to 200 books for free before it will charge you to start using its services.