Meta-Radicalism
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Presentation given September 10, 2010 as part of Library History Seminar XII: Libraries in the History of Print Culture. For associated paper, see: http://alycia.brokenja.ws/content/meta-radicalism-alternative-press-and-activist-librarians
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Meta-Radicalism
- 1. Meta-Radicalism: The Alternative Press by and for Activist Librarians The Center for the History of Print Culture in Modern America Library History Seminar XII Libraries in the History of Print Culture Alycia Sellie Brooklyn College September 10, 2010
- 2. One of the ways in which this research began…
- 9. Meta-Radicalism My focus is upon publications that have the following four criteria: 1. “Alternative” Periodicals 2. Created by Librarians 3. That promote the collection of alternative publications in libraries-- 4. as a form of library activism
- 11. Meta-Radicalism I’m also interested in how these publications have or have not been collected and preserved within libraries, and what collection development decisions—and “inside” censorship can tell us about the political landscape of librarianship as a whole.
- 12. The Three Waves of Alternative Librarian Publications: 1. Revolting Librarians 2. Riot Librarrrian 3. Hacktivists
- 13. 1. Revolting Librarians: The Undergrounds AKA: “Where have all the flowers (and political leaflets, social protest pamphlets, movement literature, and fugitive materials) gone?”
- 14. “Commercial library journals already in existence are mired in coverage of ALA, articles by male administrators who lay down the law or show off their academic terminology, ‘non-biased’ bland reviews of trade books, and non- recognition of the significance of independent publishing. At least half of their pages are devoted to advertisements for the same trade books they ‘objectively’ review.” --Valerie Wheat, The Passionate Perils of Publishing
- 16. Themes from the Revolting Library Literature: 1.“Conglomeritis” 2.Outsourcing of Collection Development 3.Definitions of the alternative press and its culture 4.How-To’s 5.Cataloging (ethical subject headings) 6.Indexing of the alternative press 7.Lists and reviews of alternative library literature (how I chose which titles to focus upon)
- 20. Zine Themes 1. How-To’s 2. Creating a collection/getting permission 3. Cataloging (technical detaisl of how to do it and the lack of pertinent terms more so than ethics of subject headings) 4. Reviews of other zines, and reading lists 5. Defining zines, zine culture and zines are not blogs
- 23. Library Holdings What has been collected? If it wasn’t collected, was there a deliberate act of “inside” censorship involved?
- 24. (Why) Libraries Should Collect Alternative Materials “Why collect such apparent oddities, low- circulation photocopied items the likes of which few have seen? Simply this: because they are a part of culture and history. Let’s not attempt to sanitize our culture, but let future historians see for themselves the true diversity of interests and modes of expression that thrived for a time. After all, imagine being able to read a list of titles, but not being able to examine them. The vaunted freedom to read means nothing if the things we want or need to read are unavailable.” --Chris Dodge, Collecting the Wretched Refuse: Lifting a Lamp to Zines, Military Newspapers and Wisconsinalia
- 25. Jane Goodall Would Collect Alternatives BILL MOYERS: So, what do we lose if the last chimp goes? JANE GOODALL: Well, we lose one window into learning about our long course of evolution… What are our great-grandchildren going to say if they look back and-- I felt sad that the dodo had gone. But those people didn't understand. They look back, the children in the future, at our generation and say, "How could they have done that? They did understand. There were lots of people out there telling them. How, why did they go on not trying to do anything about it?" BILL MOYERS: And when I told someone yesterday that you were coming, he said, "Well, you know, I just read that there are 3,200 tigers left in the world. And that their Asian habitat is disappearing very quickly." And he said, "But, you know, when the tigers are gone, will they be missed any more than the dodo is missed? What difference does it make?" he said. JANE GOODALL: It's just that, you know, if you have this huge respect for the natural world that I have. I mean, the wonder of all these different forms of evolution. And these fantastic ecosystems where everything depends on everything else. We don't know what difference it might make if some of these creatures that we're pushing to the edge disappear. You can take out a tiny insect from an ecosystem. Who cares? Well, it may turn out that some other creature depended on that tiny insect. So, that will disappear. And goodness knows what effect that one had on something over there. So, that will change. And so, in the end, you get what's been called, you know, ecological collapse.
- 26. The Opposition? “We librarians are not free agents or beatniks, but tax-paid servitors, and the institutions we work in have traditions and enjoy a respect that one would hate to see jeopardized. Many librarians are idealistic, and tend to respond sympathetically to any cry for freedom, even the cry of the drunk and homosexual writer, or the greedy cry of a publisher impatient of any obstacles to quick profits.” -- Robert D. Franklin, “A Game of Chicken,” Library Journal,
- 27. Holdings of Revolting Librarian Era Most-Cited Periodicals Rough OCLC Started Ended Title Holdings 1971 current Unabashed Librarian 836 1973 1998 Emergency Librarian (Canadian) 407 1973 1976 Booklegger Magazine 205 1970 1995 Sipapu 187 1984 1999 SRRT Newsletter 145 Counterpoise: For Social Responsibilities, 1997 current Liberty and Dissent 137 1967 1973 Synergy 131 1990 current Progressive Librarian 122 1970 Women in Libraries 71 1969 1979 Women Library Workers 58 1977 1978 Collectors Network News 25 1973 1979 Young Adult Alternative Newsletter 22 1970 1975 Liberated Librarians Newsletter 13 1970 1976 Top Secret 10 1876 current Library Journal 8000+ 1939 1995 Wilson Library Bulletin 1895+
- 28. Title OCLC Zine World 29 Zine Librarian Zine Xerography Debt 16 8 Holdings of Lower East Side Librarian Winter Solstice Shout- Out 7 Librarian Zines Durga 5 Library Bonnet 5 How to be a good library patron/ Associated How to be a bad library patron 5 Title OCLC Monograph Dwan 5 56 for Cometbus I Dreamed I Was Assertive 3 Cometbus 11 Omnibus Zine Capsule 3 108+ for Stolen Clutch 3 Brainscan 8 Sharpie Barnard Zine Library zine 3 Thoughtworm 3 Baltimore County Public Library Zine Collection 3 Browsing Room 3 Riot Librarrrian 2 The Borough is My Library 2 Biblio-Zine 2 Library Urinal 2 Meta-Zine 2 Ghosts of Ready Reference 1 Object Lesson 1 Secret Adventures of Library Pages 1 America? 0
- 34. Alycia Sellie Brooklyn College asellie@brooklyn.cuny.edu http://alycia.brokenja.ws
Notas del editor
- Introduction; this talk is more about my research process—folks can read my paper for more information.
- In February 2009, I got this email from Andrea Grimes from SFPL I hadn ’t ever heard of Synergy, but I talked to my colleagues at Brooklyn College and requested the issues
- This is what arrived. It wasn ’t a full run of the publication, but it was enough for me to be totally captivated.
- I started to look through the issues and was amazed by what I found.
- I was making a zine about libraries at the time and I was really inspired by Synergy. Everything felt very alive, though the issues were—in full disclosure—older than me.
- There were articles about bike riding, the environment, paraprofessionals, reference, homosexuality, the occult, sex, drugs and cataloging.
- As I learned more about Synergy, I kept trying to place it within the spectrum of library literature that I knew.
- This is more of what I was used to in library literature: advertisement-driven, business-like aesthetics, complete with librarians wearing business suits.
- So I started to think about why Synergy was so appealing to me and how it differed from other publications. I personally have been interested in alternative and underground publications for some time—and realized that Synergy was doing some of the same advocating for inclusion in library collections. So I set out to see if there were more Meta publications—and here is my criteria for what I was looking for.
- I mentioned “alternative.” All articles that talk about alternative literature must define that term. While I do also use “underground” here as well, I feel thinking about the word alternative is important here for many of the reasons Chris Dodge describes in his article, “Alternative to What.”
- Beyond just looking at these publications, I am interested in their relationship to library collections—especially so as publications BY librarians.
- I ’m going to touch upon the three waves of alternative library publications that I have identified—there may be others, but these are the three that I have found to be the most compelling.
- First, the revolting publications of the 60 ’s and 70’s. Offset printing made these publications possible. Library publications followed many of the attributes and trends of underground papers or other alternative materials of the time.
- Why did librarians make these publications? Like other alternative pubs, they wanted to express something that was not already expressed (something that may have been ignored or overlooked otherwise). They also wanted to offer alternatives or combat other library publications.
- In addition to Synergy, other alternative library publications began in this era. Some reflect the struggles over social responsibilities and freedom that Toni Samek has documented so well, and others are barely more than inside jokes— ”Title Varies,” for example, which had its “Hall of Shame.”
- A few major themes I have been able to identify from this era. #7 has been extremely important: many titles referenced one another and through these lists I have been able to identify and determine titles for this project.
- #2. Zines. The definition of a zine is also difficult; like defining alternative. Zines very popular in the 1990 ’s—punk and riot grrrl, but their lineage can go further back to 1930’s sci-fi or even to Tom Paine and the pamphleteers.
- People are still making zines. Librarians are making zines. A shift in emphasis, however: I have noticed that where it used to be more popular among librarians to advocate for alternative materials collections, it seems more common now to try to start a (narrower) zine collection.
- Meta! Zines by zine librarians about being zine librarians! Akin to the underground publications of the 60 ’s and 70’s advocating for undergrounds in libraries
- Zine Themes: Bowling alone phenomenon: more perzines/diaries of the lone librarian than pubs speaking to, by and for fellow comrades. Cataloging: more technical than ethical Zines are not blogs!
- 3. Activism for alternatives online? How has the web displaced print publications? And How has it changed library conversation? (Why) Would someone advocate for print publications on the web?
- Librarian blogs—many of them, as we are all aware, and they run the gamut of topics. Themes: technology (yet another meta project), trends, intellectual freedom, gripes What online projects that are happening online may have been a print publication in an earlier era? Radical Reference? Library Juice? Does the web make these projects possible in ways that print could not? And how are these digital projects and publications being preserved, if at all?
- What can our catalogs tell us about librarians and how they feel about the fringes and controversy? (because if they are not collecting librarian-created publications because they disagree with them, what ELSE aren ’t they collecting?!)
- Back up a bit: WHY should libraries bother with alternative publications? Chris Dodge Reflect the local populations in your community Collect the work of the populations in the library ’s community
- When I was prepping for this talk, I happened to hear Jane Goodall interviewed, and thought that what Jane was describing—preservation—was pertinent to why we should collect holistically.
- Who would disagree? Opposition to collecting alternative materials is usually as underground as the publications themselves One example from Library Journal in 1964.
- Here we see the proof of some kind of opposition. Sandford Berman: “Inside” censorship (not collecting what would be seen as controversial) vs. Outside censorship (challenges to books already in the collection) Is inside censorship what is happening here? S.J. Leon wrote about inside censorship in Philadelphia that the catalog does not tell us WHY something is not there. Or these publications may have been collected, but not cataloged.
- # of zines even smaller Surprising knowing the amount of literature—even in the mainstream—about zine collections
- What problems do these numbers pose? For researchers, hard to get copies of serials, as a whole item or a whole run of a publication. I had all the collections of the city of New York at my disposal, and I still had problems with ILL and access with this project. Which led me to NYPL one day to look at a few issues of this publication, Top Secret, about the Collectors Network.
- More important than just being able to see the publication is what I saw here, on the top corner of the page. Does anyone know what these three letters scribbled here mean? Does anyone recognize this handwriting?
- How I know what this means I learned when I worked in this room at the Wisconsin Historical Society for three years with James Danky. The Newspapers and Periodicals Collection got over 9,000 current titles when Jim retired in 2007. When I worked there, when Jim would check a title and found that a publication was already in the collection…
- He would scrawl these three letters on its cover. Those were the three letters I found on the cover of this title at NYPL, in his handwriting that you see here. Jim could have thrown out the issues, but his commitment to collecting and sharing made it so that I could see these issues—and when I asked him last summer he told me that he didn ’t remember sending anything to NYPL directly, so others like him helped as well.
- Finally, I wanted to end with this: one of the most inspirational pieces about alternative collecting that I have found, and one that would be very difficult to access now. It was published by Chris Dodge on his geocities website. Since geocities has since dissolved, how is one to find it now? How will this work be preserved?
- Thank you/Questions