[ISEA2017] Paper: Alessandro Ludovico — Temporary and Distributed Libraries, Breaking Boundaries, Creating New Resources

Abstract 

Keywords: Libraries, Publishing, New Media Art, Preservation, Online platforms, Digitalisation, Online Libraries

The central role of the library as a central cultural system is transforming into a still undefined new type of cultural body influenced by the spontaneous creation of different types of DIY libraries interconnecting at some point (or not) to the centralised library system. Libraries should evolve from their historical and “monumental” role, which delivers socially relevant services, into an extended, networked and shared infrastructure of knowledge, rivalling the online type of “instant” knowledge in facilitating social and cultural exchange. Two of the possible approaches to start this kind of process, which would be meant to open and socialise even more the library system, is to create “temporary libraries”, in order to fill specific knowledge needs during cultural events becoming then permanent, and “distributed libraries”, in order to integrate relevant collections of specialised knowledge accumulated elsewhere in the traditional library system without structurally intervene in it.

  • Alessandro Ludovico, Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton, Winchester, UK

Full text (PDF) p. 511-514