Departmental Papers (ASC)
Document Type
Journal Article
Date of this Version
8-6-2012
Publication Source
First Monday
Volume
17
Issue
8
DOI
10.5210/fm.v17i8.3845
Abstract
Within a week of the emergence of Occupy Wall Street, a library surfaced in the midst of the protest. Staffed by volunteers and comprised entirely of donated materials, the People’s Library offers books and media to the public, provides basic reference assistance and has built an online catalog of their holdings. In this paper, I analyze the People’s Library in terms of larger discussions of libraries, technology and activism. Drawing on personal experiences volunteering at the Library as well as text from the Library’s blog, I argue that the People’s Library offers two counter arguments to conventional claims about the public library: first, that libraries are being existentially threatened by the emergence of digital technologies and second, that a library’s institutional ethics are located solely or predominantly in the content of its collection. Using the People’s Library as a kind of conceptual case study, I explore the connections between public libraries, digital technologies and activist ideologies.
Copyright/Permission Statement
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution–NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Occupy Wall Street and the myth of technological death of the library by Jessa Lingel First Monday, Volume 17, Number 8 - 6 August 2012 http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3845/3280 doi:10.5210/fm.v17i8.3845
Recommended Citation
Lingel, J. (2012). Occupy Wall Street and the Myth of Technological Death of the Library. First Monday, 17 (8), https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v17i8.3845
Date Posted: 09 July 2018
This document has been peer reviewed.