Course:LIBR559A/Rhodes, T. (2014)

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Citation

Rhodes, T. (2014). A living, breathing revolution: How libraries can use ‘living archives’ to support, engage, and document social movements. IFLA Journal, 40(1), 5-11. doi:10.1177/0340035214526536

Annotation

Libraries are in a unique position to engage and document social movements in their communities. One way this can be take form is the living archive format. The example used is the #searchunderoccupy exhibition at the New School’s (NYC) Sheila C. Johnson Design Center and is suggested as a model for other libraries to follow. The author proposes that support for social rights in a library’s community is in line with ALA’s strategic plan (2010) with regards to transforming library spaces by encouraging experimentation in emerging technologies and innovative ideas. Oldenburg’s concept of “third places”, somewhere apart from home and work, is used here to suggest that libraries as relaxing resource filled public spaces can be the focus of social movement in their communities. The author expounds on the history of living archives and provides multiple examples. Visual elements of the #searchunderoccupy exhibit are shown in a series of images of the installations, graphic designs, and their importance to the Occupy movement. Rhodes describes the role social media played in OWS and how the exhibition uses this data as the basis for a virtual archive. Real time data was collected and can be retrieved in the form of word clouds, stack hierarchies, and matrix charts at occupydatanyc.org. The virtual archive extended the value and accessibility of the exhibition and continued the documentation and discourse online. The author posits that libraries of the future need to embrace new forms of technology and expression in addition to providing more traditional services to their communities. The OWS example may be to complex for some smaller libraries with fewer resources but the example of a living archive project could be translated to any community to highlight local culture and social movents


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Page author: Philip Weaver