The Revolution Will Be Cataloged: Introducing OccupyWiki

Yesterday I spent a good chunk of the day adding pages to the new wiki site, OccupyWiki. This site, created by Sarah Keefe, has an enormous potential. Specifically, its current structure asks for one page to be added for every city and town whose citizens have joined in the Occupy movement for solidarity with Occupy Wall Street. If these pages are added and then filled in with accurate information provided by citizen journalists, librarians, and/or participating demonstrators, it will become an invaluable information service and document of witness.

I stand in support of the Occupy Together movement. I believe that it is, at its core, not primarily a movement of the angry or the radical, but rather of many, many fed up citizens standing up to be counted. Citizens are being cut out of the civic conversation, civic and human values are being cut out of the national conversation, narrow interests have hijacked the phrases and vocabulary of the national rhetoric, and citizens are finally, at long last, stepping out of their houses to participate in a conversation in the street. To me, this is participatory democracy at its simplest. First, we step out of our isolation. Next, we stand together and have a conversation. And see where it goes.

I'd like to draw a distinction here about the internet's role in this movement. The Occupy movement is not something that is happening on Facebook, on the web, on petitions, or on Youtube. It is something that is happening in people's hearts and in the streets and in encampments. But the internet can sometimes help get the word out widely and quickly, and other times be an important witness, and still other times set the record straight against misinformation or under-reporting. I mean to stress that it is not enough to sign a petition, or follow the New York news stories, or enjoy the Flickr pages. I believe that the citizens everywhere need now to stand in the streets and be counted in person if they wish to make a show of strength against corporate rule. But I believe that OccupyWiki can help by bearing witness (in one place) and offering an accurate and easy-to-read document of how many people are marching, how many people are camping out, and how very many cities are "Occupying."

This past Saturday evening, when I was searching for news of which U.S. cities had held "Occupy" rallies and marches on October 15th (in a worldwide show of support for Occupy Wall Street), I was surprised. I was surprised at how little coverage there was of the U.S. protests, how hard it was to find clear and authoritative information, and how inaccurate, downplayed, and/or erratic was the information coming out of my own city's news sources (Pittsburgh). I'm happy to say we had about 2,000 marchers here, but the estimates given to the press were anywhere from "500" (one frequently-cited police estimate) to "3,000" (an organizer estimate) to "4,000" (a different police estimate). (It may be true that up to 3,000 participated throughout the day but that only about 2,000 were ever gathered at once.)

When I started working on OccupyWiki on Sunday, I was adding skeleton pages for American cities that have started Occupy movements. The first thing I would seek was an official webpage made by City X's organizers. Many cities' Occupiers have websites full of interesting information, event calendars, calls for donations for overnight demonstrators, and pages for photos and videos. On the one hand there are some impressive websites that have gone up very quickly. But on the other hand, the most time-consuming part of my wiki process was finding specific information on each website. Sometimes I couldn't tell from an elaborate website where the encampment was located, and sometimes I couldn't tell if the encampment was still intact. Many times the hardest thing to find on the site was direct contact information. This is another vote for a site like OccupyWiki. I find the format of a wiki a democratizing way of looking at information. Imagine if in one place you could see a list of all cities "Occupying," and then on each city's page, you knew you could find reliable categories of up-to-date information. How many people are spending the night to show their support. How much flack they've gotten from the police. Have they had local media problems like consistent under-reporting, low numbers reported, media blackouts (San Francisco), or hacked websites or Facebook pages (Philadelphia)? Or have they, like Cleveland or Los Angeles, had vocal support from the city itself? One librarian I corresponded with wants to know which occupations have libraries.

Meanwhile, users of Flickr and Youtube are contributing important visual documents of how many people are out on the streets, how creative their protests are, how energized are their marches. I'd love to see a Flickr pool for each city and a link to that pool on each OccupyWiki page. And Twitter continues to be recommended as the best way to get up-to-the-minute information from numerous citizens who are on the ground in each locale (more reliable as a whole than just following one Twitter account). I've been researching the hashtags for each city, which are sometimes just the obvious like #OccupySyracuse or #OccupyMadison, but other times a regional abbreviation like #OccupyNOLA, #OccupyPGH, or #OccupyCincy.

I was heartened, of course, to hear how many cities worldwide protested on October 15th, and the massive numbers in certain cities like Brussels and Madrid. But I'll admit I'm particularly heartened by the American protests, because Americans don't generally protest. And I'm afraid that the numerous American protests are being under-reported and mis-reported by the national media, and often enough by local news.

Which brings me to another thing I find democratic and necessary about the wiki format. If traditional journalism (a crucial branch of any healthy democracy) is failing us via both budget cuts (resulting in under reporting) and corporate ownership of news outlets (resulting in inaccurate reporting, slanted reporting, or media blackouts), then citizen journalism must save the day. I am not trying here to malign or dismiss journalists on the whole, but to stress that this Occupy movement will be perceived through not only editorials, blogs, and daily news reports, but through information itself. The citizens both inside and outside the movement deserve to see a clear and accurate picture of the Occupy protests, camps, numbers, and activities.

Sarah Keefe, who identifies with Occupy Boston, started the OccupyWiki (see OccupyWiki.info) with free, open-source software from MediaWiki on October 5, 2011 because she didn't find any other site like it on the web at the time. Inspired by a fellow Boston protester's crowdsourced document online, she originally created the wiki thinking it would be used by protesters who could amass and share "relevant reading, useful videos, news coverage, protesting and camping tips, and local information about their own protests." Now Keefe says she sees Occupywiki.org has cropped up since she last looked. In a web 2.0 world, it's hard to say if both will flourish, or if one will stress a different aspect than the other. But I am heartened by the Occupy movement itself and want to help show its true and accurate side through clearly-presented facts to citizens seeking to inform themselves.

Small Press: Related Terms

These terms are related to the term Small Press:

Underground press, alternative press, alt press, independent press, indie publishing, indie lit, underground literature, underground newspapers, free press, zines, little magazines, fanzines, micro press, samizdat, bibuła, self-publishing, self-published, underground comix, small press comics, The Mimeograph Revolution.

Small Press Books: Steer Gift-Givers to the Nearest Indie Bookstore

Live from Small Business Saturday: With today's post, I'm hoping to steer you to a method of receiving some of your holiday small press book wishes while supporting indie bookstores.

I'll admit that I utilize evil Amazon (as a catalog) a lot for their many useful web functions, and their Wish List is one of them. But where I used to tell people to look at my Amazon book-list but please, please, buy the book at a local indie bookstore--today I discovered that IndieBound (formerly BookSense, a coalition of indie bookstores that formed in reaction to the predatory practices of the chain bookstores) has a Wish List function on their website, too. It's quick and easy to make:

1. Go to http://www.indiebound.org/join to create a username and password and register your email (no real names necessary)
2. Go to Wish Lists and start adding desired books by author name, book title, or ISBN

3. Go to the Indie Stores tab and become a "fan" of one or more of your favorite bookstores

3a. You'll find the Become a Fan button when you find a bookstore and go to its profile page

3b. I suggest you fan the obvious bookstores where your friends and relatives might shop, in addition to your own favorite bookstores

4. Send interested friends and relatives the link to your Wish List

While it's true that not all micro-press books will be found in IndieBound's database, there are many small press books that do show up. A quick look just landed me catalog listings for Matt Bell's How They Were Found on Keyhole Books, Michael Kimball's Dear Everybody on Alma Books, Dalkey Archive's Best European Fiction (2010), Felino A. Soriano's In Praise of Absolute Interpretation (Desperanto-Foster), and Shome Dasgupta's new book on Outsider Writers Press.

ALTERNATIVE PRESS CATALOGING: A BRIEF BIBLIOGRAPHY WITH QUOTES

A brief list of literature on the Why’s and How’s of the cataloging of items of alternative press, independent press, micro press, small press, or zines.

Alternative Press Collective. (1984). Alternative Press Index. In S. Berman and J. P. Danky (Eds.), Alternative library literature 1982-83: A biennial anthology (168-170). Phoenix, AZ: Oryx Press.

“Originally, the Index was viewed as a tool to be used almost exclusively by activists. But as years went by, it came to be seen as a tool for academic researchers as well.” (APC, p. 170)

Bartel, J. (2004). From A to Zine: Building a winning zine collection in your library. Chicago: ALA.

See especially “Living Arrangements,” pp. 77-91.

“We decided that if we...did value the zine collection [at Salt Lake City Public Library] as much as we said we did, we should accord it the same respect given to other formats and make it accessible to patrons through the library database.” (Bartel, p. 85)

Berman, S. (1981). Access to Alternatives. In S. Berman, The Joy of Cataloging (124-148). Phoenix, AZ: Oryx Press.

“It’s not enough to simply acquire alternative and small press materials. They must also be made easily accessible to library users by means of intelligible, accurate, and generous cataloging.” (Berman, p. 124)

Berman advises the cataloger to offer (when cataloging alternative press materials): a generous amount of access points; notes describing the importance/nature of the presses themselves; ”added entries” under subtitles and catch phrases users might remember; and as many subject headings as apply. He further advocates the cataloger to “compose notes to clarify content, indicate special features, and show relationships to other works, persons, or groups.” (Berman, p. 129)

Berman, S. (2005, Oct.). Zine cataloging. Retrieved October 28, 2007, from
http://www.barnard.edu/library/zines/berman_cataloging.htm

“My hope is that somewhere--perhaps at Ohio State or Salt Lake City Public--someone is confecting a mini-thesaurus of zine categories that might be proposed to LC--but in any event could be employed in-house by sizeable zine collections to permit more specific and helpful access to the zine cosmos.” (Berman)

Glazier, L. (1986). Libraries, small press, and 1984: A West Coast perspective. In S. Berman and J. P. Danky (Eds.), Alternative library literature 1984/85: A biennial anthology (87-88). Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland.

Writing on the “Creative Use of Data Base Technology”: “Once a publisher of merit is recognized, it is essential for the librarian to keep track of a.) relevant literary journals...b.) chapbooks and books published by the publisher and its peers c.) proposed publications of the publisher and d.) publications associated with the publisher by reference. Much of small press publishing is sporadic. In terms of ordering, tracking, and billing, it tends to be much easier to follow the larger publishers.” (Glazier, p.88) She advocates “design[ing] a program that allows tracking of publishers of interest.” (Glazier, p. 88)

Herrada, J. [with Aul, B., Smith, A., Basinski, M., and Trusky, T.] (1996). In S. Berman and J. P. Danky (Eds.), Alternative library literature, 1994/95: A biennial anthology (304-311). Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland.

“…problems arise in the process of collecting and organizing zines. Many zines confound the serials librarian because of the lack of interest by publishers in listing ‘normal’ information of issue number or date; virtually none carry an ISSN.” (Herrada, p. 304-305)

“The zine part of this collection [at New York State Library]…is arranged in alphabetical order by title. No other processing is done to this material. A researcher is welcome to go through the collection [of well over 10,000 zines] box by box….Maybe in some bright future electronic library, we’ll be able to make them more accessible than we can now.” (Aul, p. 306)

“Collecting the anti-literary poetry zine insurgence before it vanishes is vitally important for future research into the shifting centers and concerns of American poetry....To effectively collect the erratic, underground, and transitory publications, the [Poetry Collection at the SUNY/Buffalo Library] is involved in various networks of underground poets and editors. There are no directories of underground poetry zines.” (Basinski, p. 309)

Hsu, H. (2007, May 6). File Under Other. Retrieved October 28, 2007, from

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/05/06/file_under_other

“[Library] interest in zines is part of a broader move spearheaded by older activists like Sanford Berman...and James Danky....to encourage the acquisition of ‘alternative materials’--everything from regional, underground newspapers and self-published pamphlets to publisher catlogs and Internet newsletters....The very presence of these items exposes gaps in the holdings of a library and the flaws of current cataloging orthodoxies.” (Hsu)

Lee, E. (1996). Small publishers and big libraries: How bureaucracy and hugeness work to suppress non-mainstream ideas. In S. Berman and J. P. Danky (Eds.), Alternative library literature, 1994/95: A biennial anthology (91-94). Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland.

“Especially in small public or college libraries, the problems involved with cataloging books published by non-commercial presses often discourage the librarian from accepting gift [books] at all. Some large university libraries have a standing policy of refusing all gifts from small-press publishers....In recent years, libraries have come to rely more and more on shared cataloging....This is especially important for small press publishers since many libraries won’t even try to buy a copy of a book unless they can verify it in OCLC or Books in Print or Baker and Taylor Link....The point here is that libraries (and bookstores) need accurate title, author, and publisher information before they will even attempt to order a book.” (Lee, p. 91)

Scott, R. (1986). Cataloging Comics. In S. Berman (Ed.), Cataloging special materials: Critiques and innovations (50-70). Phoenix, AZ: Oryx Press.

“...cataloging of comic books will have to be done before large collections can be used efficiently. The universe of comics is so large that serious research can scarcely be expected to flourish until it is possible to guage the completeness and extent of a given collection in some detail.” (Scott, p. 50)

Thews, D. and Harvey, M.A. (1986). Libraries and the small press. In S. Berman and J. P. Danky (Eds.), Alternative library literature 1984/85: A biennial anthology (85-86). Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland.

“[In the Minneapolis Public Library,] we have treated our small press titles as we do paperbacks, not reinforcing or cataloging them, but adding a pocket and circulating them for the usual 3 or 4 weeks.” (Thews, p. 85)

West, C. (1982, May). Stalking the literary-industrial complex. American Libraries 13 (5), 298-301.

“[Librarians] can systematically budget 10-20-30 percent of whatever money and time we do have to support the free press....Librarians can ask local authors, publishers, teachers and other engage for help and information in various areas such as social change, ethnic, avant-garde, and feminist. Free press collecting is difficult. These people resources can ease the bibliographic and acquisition job.” (West, p. 299)

West, C. (1983, Sept. 1). The secret garden of censorship: Ourselves. Library Journal, 1651-1653.

“Of course, if you order the [alternative press] material and someone else ghettoizes it, mis- or under-catalogs it, the effect is still censorship.” (West, p. 1652)

White, M., Perratt, P., and Lawes, L. on behalf of ARLI/UK & Ireland Cataloguing and Classification Committee. (2006). Artists’ books: A cataloguers’ manual. London: ARLIS/UK & Ireland and The Courtauld Institute of Art.

“In some artists’ books the usual bibliographic elements may be absent, hidden, or disguised. The cataloguer should examine the artist’s book, seeking out the odd places where bibliographic information may be hidden. AARC2 instructs the cataloguer to base a description on...the title page or title page substitute. However artists’ books may have no title page or may have several.” (White, Perratt, and Lawes, p.7)

“Even if the cataloguer cannot find bibliographic information on the artist’s book all is not lost. The cataloguer has tools to help them....The artist may be willing to provide writte information about the book. This can be kept with the book and the cataloguer can quote from it. Furthermore many artists have websites detailing their works which can be a useful source of information....Booksellers are able to provide bibliographic details. Printed Matter, for example, has a website which includes title, statement of responsibility and publishing details, as well as a description of the book.” (White, Perratt, and Lawes, pp. 7-8)