User:Book/BlogEntry: 2008 September 16 09:25:22 EAT
From KLAMediaWiki
Contents |
ON THE DOCUMENTATION OF THE SOCIAL FORUMS IN THE LIBRARIES (Part two)
- Reality is the shared dream of mankind and nobody knows what is really happening.
- - Leena Krohn[1].
These notes are a continuation of an article about the documentation of knowledge versus the documentation of social activities.[2] The article relates to the documentation of the process and events of the world social forum as well as the regional, national and local social forums. In this later part, I shall bear in mind the response from some librarians and social activists to the first part of the article.[3].
The theme of this second part is that we need to organize a documentation for the future on the basis of our documentation of the past.
PREMISES. OPEN SPACE AND CYBERSPACE
The social forum, in the form it was given by its founders, is a step forward on the road towards a world society. The 'open space' of the social forum is a sign of the 'globalization' of civic action. Global democratization ought longer to be seen as an abstract goal, or utopia, but as a practical task for the citizens to complete.[4]
The part played by information in global democratization is crucial. To paraphrase an old saying: at the global level information becomes the continuation of war and politics by other means. H.G Wells said as much in his manifesto from 1928, which he called The Open Conspiracy (and later renamed to What To Do with Our Lives?):
" Existing states are primarily militant states, and a world state cannot be militant. There will be little need for president or king to lead the marshalled hosts of humanity, for where there is no war there is no need of any leader to lead hosts anywhere, and in a polyglot world a parliament of mankind or any sort of council that meets and talks is an inconceivable instrument of government. The voice will cease to be a suitable vehicle. World government, like scientific process, will be conducted by statement, criticism, and publication that will be capable of efficient translation." [5]
However, a 'world government conducted by statement, criticism and publication' presupposes world society.
The library institution, old as the society itself, and the internet, still in its infancy, are two facets of the transformation of man into a writing and reading being with an external memory. Together, they form the foundation on which world self-government can be built .
The birth and the growth of the 'open space' of the world social forum is a sign of the formation of a global society -- a society with a common library and a common internet.
Those who remain mental prisoners of the present hierarchic system of military blocs and states are not able to build a common society. The little they have achieved in terms of diplomatic agreements, such as, for instance, the treaty on non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, they have systematically spoiled. After 1945, traditional, inter-governmental diplomacy, has only managed to create "cold war", which could mean the end of mankind, and "war on terror", which means infinite war. Their infinite war on terror is just another way to kill us all.
Hope, therefore, lies in 'citizens diplomacy'. The social forum is its current form. Precisely because the social forum is not a political party, or a social movement with some specified goals, (which is another way to say 'political party'), but an opening towards a common society of mankind, the social forum is a historical novelty.
If the process which took off at Porto Alegre in 2001 would fail, the social forum would have to be re-invented later on. The citizens of the world need a common 'open space'. It is a basic necessity, like food, health-care and democracy.
The conditions are in some respects more favorable today than at the time of Wells. The internet, in particular, gives a new point of departure for political thought and political praxis. With the internet, it may be possible, for the first time, to create a common human understanding ("an information"), which is not controlled and manipulated by Nationalist and military-industrial interests, or religious fanatics. Thus it may be possible to add a new dimension to the old idea of liberty, based on the separation of state powers.
The internet can become an Informational Power, which completes the constitutional triad of the Executive, Legislative and Judicial Powers of the modern Nation-States. The peoples of the world need to install a global political system, in which the new informational power checks and balances the powers of the nation-states.
The internet regulates itself to a great extent. This is why we call it cyberspace. Cyberspace means self-government by means of information. But the self-governance of the internet is not yet on a secure basis. It needs to be be further separated from the militaristic nation-states and the corporate interests, which threaten to turn information into exclusive 'intellectual property'.
The solution to the problem of 'internet governance' is at hand. Internet governance is a librarian's task.
THE LIBRARY
The library is said to be the memory of mankind. [6] Let us accept this definition, although it may be a bit difficult to understand how mankind can have a common memory.
What we do understand is that past knowledge and knowledge of the past are necessary in order to foresee and plan for the future. This is why past and present knowledge and events are documented and put on record. But how to prepare the memory of mankind for the future?
The memory of mankind, that is, the library, has to be prepared in three ways. Or, rather it should prepare itself in three ways. The library, after all, is an independent institution. The following is primarily about what its professional staff, the librarians, have to do.
Firstly, the librarians must continue with the activities that have made the library into the great and indispensable institution it is.
Secondly, the library needs to continue with what at least some libraries have already started to do in order to be better integrated in their local communities. The current buzzword is "Library 2.0" (imitated after "Web 2.0").
Finally, there is a third item on the librarian's todo-list , which he or she has not really started to do yet. This is described as "government".
RANGANATHAN AND HIS FOLLOWERS
Nobody has summarized the librarian's task more succinctly than the Indian mathematician and librarian S.R Ranganathan. (1892-1972). Erik Carlqvist, in his introduction to Ranganathan's classical writing Five Laws of Library Science, jokingly calls him the "law-giver" of the library. Ranganathan's five laws are:
1. Books are for use. 2. Every reader his [or her] book. 3. Every book its reader. 4. Save the time of the User. 5. The library is a growing organism.[7]
In the age of he internet, Ranganathan's laws may be bit too bookcentric (i.e. fixated with one particular cultural archetype, the book). Therefore, Timo Kuronen's two supplementary laws are also worth mentioning:
6. Every reader his library 7. Every writer his [or her] contribution to the library [8]
The above mentioned five "laws" already keep the librarians very busy. Kuronen's two supplementary laws give the librarians even more to do. Developing "Library 2.0" is indeed very much about using the Internet and the World Wide Web locally, to make the local public library as relevant as possible for the members of the local community. For instance, in order to give every writer in the neighborhood possibility to make "his [or her ] contribution to the library", the library needs to maintain blogs and wikis. The implication is that "the library takes up the case", as Norwegian librarian and journalist Anders Ericson puts it. Thus the librarian's new awareness for the needs of the local people translates into an ongoing documentation of current "issues". This activity comes close to journalism. As an example Anders Ericson takes the case of library blogs which document the debates and the historical background of a planned new civil airport in Rygge near Oslo.[9]
A lot more is to be said about what librarians already are doing. Canadian library scientist Toni Samek, for instance, has written an an entertaining guide to socially active public librarianship, in which she describes the "prevalent manifestations of social action applied to library work", as well as many "specific forms of social action used in library and information work for social change". [10]
LIBRARY POWER
It was said that the library has not yet started to "govern" or to be a "government". This is not wholly true. The power of the libraries resides in their crucial role in the transmission of culture and knowledge. [11] Thus our libraries are governing us in many indirect ways which we may be more or less unaware of.
The question is, should the library do even more than guaranteeing the historical continuity of mankind? Should the library more than hitherto start behaving like the government of a state and become more like a state power?
The answer is yes. Of course, the library must not become violent like the state. It should not start building and modernizing its own atomic bombs like, for instance, the states of France and Britain. No, the library should govern exclusively by means of information. In this respect, however, the library has something to learn from the state.
The modern state is organized around a limited number of "actionable themes", to use an expression from the World Social Forum. The various ministries or departments of the state are named after these themes. Those themes amount to nothing more and nothing less than rough classification of practical action.
The state is, firstly, a brutal and violent apparatus for repression and even annihilation (those barbaric weapons of mass destruction!) But the state is also the home of government, which sets out to solve the main problems of the nation.
What the library needs to do, in addition to all the things it is already doing, is to organize its information around the main problems of mankind. The 21 "actionable themes" of the world social forum, already quoted in the first part of this article, is a decent listing of the problems and therefore a good start.
Is this a wildly unrealistic and far out Utopian proposal? Certainly not. What is needed is only a little bit of more courage from the side of the librarians to conspire openly against their state governments. It is difficult, because of the fact that the libraries are (mostly) dependent on the state governments for their funding. However, with global democratization comes global taxes, from which the libraries of the world society may be funded.
The end of the era of Neoliberalism is in sight, the present financial system is rotten. A new system of world public finances is badly needed. The library ought to side with the people who want to build it -- the peoples of the World Social Forum.
The library is not supposed to stay within any national borders, or to accept any limitations its information. The library is expected to deliver all the information without delay to all. The library cannot obey to any "Patriot Acts", because it has to stick to the principle of the Freedom of Information. We may conclude, again, that the library already is on the right track in what it is doing. The principle of the Freedom of Information is, since long, accepted by all professional members of the library community. It is just a question of keeping up the good work.
AN ADDITIONAL REMARK ON ARCHIVES AND LIBRARIES
Professional archivists often stick to the principle of provenance.:
"One of the main principles of systematising archives is the principle of provenience [i.e. provenance - MB]. It means that the archive should be kept or brought back to the original order. To achieve this it is important to understand the organisation of the institution, the structure of the archives, the work flow and so on." [12]
A related rule of the archivist is, or has been, that the uniqueness of the materials has to be respected This has gone hand in hand with the idea that records need to be archived only once, in one archive:
"uniqueness... a record should, by way of principle, only be stored in one place, in contrast with books, which are preserved in many places in many copies [exemplar]. Therefore each archive is different." [13]
However, after the advent of digital computers and networks the borderline between archives and libraries has become blurred. Henceforward, whole archives - small or large - can be scanned, copied and included in the collections of libraries. And vice versa: archives may keep copies of whole libraries together with their archived materials.
The mutual extension and fusion of archives and libraries has not only become technically feasible. It is also economically possible. Furthermore, it is socially desirable.
Yet archives containing the original 'physical' records and documents, and library buildings with collections of printed books and professional librarians, are necessary as ever. We want to keep "the originals", the printed book must stay, and the professional librarian remains as indispensable as the medical professional, the judge and the lawyer, and the engineer.
Above all, the internet needs to be anchored in a social institution. That institution must not be the nation-state or the business corporation. It must be the library. In the long perspective, the internet is just an extension of what Ranganathan called 'a growing organism'. (To be finalized after the European Social Forum in Malmö 17-21 September 2008 [15]).
ENDNOTES
[1] Leena Krohn is a living Finnish author. One of her many works is Tainaron. Mail from another city (A novel. Translated by Hildi Hawkins. Prime Books 2004).
[2] See http://tinyurl.com/6bzwsj . The adress point to a page of the project "Librarians for informational commons and another Europe" at http://openesf.net and http://www.customwritings.com
[3] Summary of the response received:
Hilde C Stepansen sent me the "Proposal for memory plan for ESF2008 (by the Documentation workgroup, NOC ESF2008 July 13, 2008), from which I quote this sentence: "The information posted about an activity through the ESF2008 homepage, both outcome field or other data, shall be stored in such a way that it can survive even when the ESF2008 homepage no longer exists". -- In my opinion, the documentation on the social forum should be stored in public libraries and archives, which are maintained by professional librarians and archivists.
Tord Björk supported my view that the social forum needs to become integrated into society via the libraries, but criticizes my opinions about the internet and the social forum.
Hervé Le Crosnier, university librarian at Caen (France), wrote in a private email: "I think your desire to gain trained librarians to be full participants [in the social forum's process] with their own speciality is a very good point. Movement sometimes have "communication specialists", but never Librarians. May be because they aim at future in a pro-active way and never as an history continuum." Hervé here formulates the problem, which I am trying to address in this second series of notes. Francine Mestrum doubted that the "21 actionable themes" (which I listed and wrote about in the first part of this article) where never 'unanimously decided', but were instead "improvised during WSF Nairobi by organizing committee or someone else..." . Francine also wondered where to put 'social movements' and 'globalization' among the '21 actionable themes'. Ask the librarian!
Michael Widerkrantz, who (at the time of writing) works on an eprints file archive for the European Social Forum, also commented on the '21 actionable themes': "It seems like a decent list. We might need to add subjects as we go along, I guess. For one thing, I find it difficult to include a text on, say alternative use of technology under any subject in this list."
[4] The present author is a member of the Network Institute of Global Democratization (http://www.nigd.org).
[5] From H.G.Wells: The Open Conspiracy [1931], in H.G.Wells on World Revolution. Edited and with a critical introduction by W. Warren Wagar. Praeger 2002, pp 70-71. The article in the English language Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Open_Conspiracy) links to the elecctronic text of Wells's book.
[6] Thus Erik Carlqvist and Harry Järv have chosen the title "Mänsklighetens minne" (The Memory of Mankind) for their anthology on library history. See Mänsklighetens minne, Schildts 2008.
[7] About Ranganathan's Five Laws of Library Science, see e.g. Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_laws_of_library_science. For a Swedish translation of Ranganathan's writing, see "Mänsklighetens minne", op.cit, pp 593-672.
[8] Quoted from Timo Kuronen's dissertation help in information science; see Kuronen, Timo: "English Summary", pp. 126ff in Kansalaiskeskustelun edellytykset ja mahdollisuudet tietoverkkojen aikakaudella, Acta Electronica Universitatis Tamperensis 31 , Tampere 2000. http://acta.uta.fi/english/teos.phtml?3809 ff. (ISBN 951-44-4814-6)
[9] See "The Library Takes Up The Case- A Handshake For More Democracy, http://edufdaoduf.googlepages.com/librarycase (accessed 16 Sept 2008).
[10] Samek, Toni: Librarianship and Human Rights. A twenty-first century guide. Foreword by Edgardo Civallero. Contributions by Kenneth D. Gariepy . Chandos Publishing 2007.
[11] "Le pouvoir des bibliothÁ ques rÁ side enfin dans leur role crucial dans la transmission de la culture et des savoirs", as the editor of a book on the subject of library power has put it. See Baratin, Marc & Jacob, Christian eds.: Le pouvoir des bibliothÁques. La memoire des livres en Occident. Albin Michel 1996, p. 17.
[12] Quoted from the article "Making archives accessible", (http://www.arkivverket.no/stavanger/konferanse/totalfina.html, accessed 14 Sep 2008). "Provenance is a fundamental principle of archives, referring to the individual, group, or organization that created or received the items in a collection", it is also stated in an article on the Wikipedia. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provenance#Archives)
[13] Quoted from Valtonen, Marjo: "Arkiv och handlingar", in Mäkinen, Ilkka & Sandqvist, Katja eds.: Introduktion till informationsvetenskapen. Tampere University Press 2003, p 171.
[14] Quoted from university essays source where students get much of their information university essay (accessed 13 Sept 2009)
[15] This article (and its first part) is my contribution to the discussions in the ESF workshop SOCIAL MOVEMENTS, LIBRARIES, RESEARCHERS AND HISTORIANS in Malmö 18 September 2008 and the related workshop THE LIBRARY STRIKES BACK in the library of Malmö university 20 September 2008. Hopefully, delegates to the meeting of International Council of the World Social Forum, which takes place in Copenhagen some days after the ESF in Malmö, will also take an interest in these ideas.
